Culture Representation: The true crime documentary film “A Friend, a Murderer” features an all-white group of Danish people talking about the crimes of Philip Patrick Westh, who was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the 2016 murder of a 17-year-old girl and violent crimes against two other teenage girls in 2022 and 2023.
Culture Clash: Westh, who was a 32-year-old marketing manager when he was arrested in 2023, had a secret life as a sadistic sex predator who targeted girls.
Culture Audience: “A Friend, a Murderer” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in true crime documentaries about violent and perverted criminals who fooled their friends and family members into thinking that they were decent and upstanding people.
Kiri Olsen in “A Friend, a Murderer” (Photo courtesy of Netflix)
“A Friend, a Murderer” has an unnecessary “whodunit” narrative when this docuseries’ title already reveals the killer is a betraying friend. However, the interviews are compelling in this cautionary tale that needed tighter editing. This is the type of documentary that could’ve been a feature film that’s 90 minutes or less instead of stretched out into a three-episode, 126-minute docuseries. “A Friend, a Murderer” has a combination of exclusive interviews, archival footage and some re-enactments.
Directed by Christian Dyekjær, “A Friend, a Murderer” doesn’t interview a lot of people for this docuseries. Each episode is named after someone in the episode who gets the featured interview spotlight as a close friend of the murderer who was shocked to find out the truth when the killer was arrested. Most of the other people who are interviewed were involved in the search of the missing 17-year-old girl who disappeared while walking home alone from a train station in Korsør, Denmark, shortly after 4 a.m. on July 10, 2016. Her murdered body was found in a lake near Borup, Denmark, on December 24, 2016. Philip Patrick Westh, who was convicted of her murder and other violent crimes against teenage girls, declined to be interviewed or provide comments for this documentary.
Episode 1, title “Amanda,” features a woman identified only as Amanda, who was part of the killer’s friend group when she was in her late teens, and he was in his mid-20s. Episode 2, titled “Kiri,” features Kiri Olsen, who became the best friend’s live-in partner and for a time was the killer’s housemate when the killer lived with the couple. Episode 3, titled “Nichlas,” focuses on Nichlas Kruse, who was the killer’s best friend from 2008 until the killer’s arrest in 2023.
The names of the victims have been deliberately left out of this documentary to respect their privacy and because they were underage at the times that these crimes happened. It’s the type of privacy restraint that most American-made true crime documentaries would not have. The names of the victims have been reported in several media outlets and are public record, so it’s not as if this information is a secret. However, because this documentary didn’t include the names of the victims, this review also won’t include the names.
The murder of the 17-year-old girl was followed by an attempted rape and kidnapping of a 15-year-old a girl in Sorø, Demnark, on the night of August 11, 2022. And on April 15, 2023, a 13-year-old girl was kidnapped while delivering newspapers in Kirkerup, Denmark. The next day, she was found at the Korsør home of Westh, who at the time was a 32-year-old marketing manager.
All three girls were the victims of Westh in these crimes. It was later revealed that the Westh had raped the 13-year-old girl. The documentary doesn’t reveal Westh as the perpetrator of all of these crimes until the end of Episode 2. It’s an awfully long time to drag out this “reveal,” considering there were obvious clues (based on the interviews with the two women who used to be his close friends) that Westh was the perpetrator.
“A Friend, a Murderer” has a methodical structure that takes viewers along a chronological retelling of the investigation and explains why police didn’t initially think that the 2016 murder was committed by the same person who committed the other crimes in 2022 and 2023. However, videos from surveillance cameras became crucial in identifying the perpetrator’s car that was caught on camera to be at the scene where the victims were at the time that they were attacked. Westh looked “normal,” with a clean-cut appearance, so it’s easy to see how he could blend in, and people would assume that he was harmless.
The documentary includes interviews with three people who were personally involved in the 2016 search for the missing 17-year-old: voluntary search coordinator Jane Valsted, Missing Persons founder Sofie Sønderup, and local priest Anna Helleberg Kluge. The interviews with these women are examples of how caring community members can rally together to find a missing person. These interviews are fairly interesting, but they don’t give much information about how this mystery was solved.
Instead, journalist Bo Norström Weile, who covered the Westh case extensively, gives most of the information in the documentary about the investigations of these cases. The documentary’s biggest flaw is not having any interviews with any of the law enforcement officials who were directly involved in investigating and/or prosecuting Westh. The participation of victims or victims’ family members in a documentary depends on many factors, including how willing they are to talk about their trauma for a documentary. If a true crime documentary doesn’t have interviews with victims or the victims’ family members, then it’s still important that the documentaries treat the victims with dignity and respect, which is what “A Friend, a Murderer” does by protecting the victims’ privacy in not naming them.
Because of the concept of the documentary is about how Westh was able to fool a lot of people, the interviews with the friends carry the most emotional weight in this documentary. Amanda says that when she was in high school, she was part of a tight-knit group of friends that included her older boyfriend at the time, Kruse’s girlfriend at the time, Westh and Kruse. Amanda describes Westh and Kruse as inseparable friends who liked to party and treated each other like brothers.
Amanda says she was deeply affected by the disappearance and murder of the 17-year-old because she was around the same age and felt that the same thing could’ve happened to her. She says it took her years before she felt safe to walk outside alone at night—and it was only after the killer was caught and sent to prison. Amanda also remembers the fear that gripped the community until the killer was found and arrested.
The day that the 17-year-old victim’s disappearance made the news, Amanda recalls how she, her boyfriend at the time, Kruse’s then-girlfriend, Kruse and Westh watched the European Cup finals at a campsite owned by her boyfriend’s parents. Amanda remembers that the only thing that was unusual about this get-together was Westh being tardy. She now knows that Westh had probably been hiding the murdered girl’s body at the lake at Regnemarks Bakke near Borup, Denmark, where the girl’s body was found five months later by a family walking their dog.
Olsen gives a much more insightful interview because she and met Westh and Kruse when they were all adults. When Olsen and Kruse started dating each other, Kruse had already been married and divorced. Westh was Kruse’s best man at Kruse’s 2019 wedding to a woman who is not named in the documentary.
Olsen says that Westh moved in with her and Kruse, and they were like a family trio. After a while, she felt that Westh’s constant presence made her relationship with Kruse a little uncomfortable because Westh was starting to become like a “third wheel.” She describes feeling relieved when Westh decided to move out and get his own place. Still, Olsen didn’t notice anything unusual about bachelor Westh except that he didn’t seem interested in dating anyone.
However, there was one incident where she saw a very emotionless side to Westh. Olsen says it was when Olsen and Kruse told Westh the happy news that Olsen was pregnant with the couple’s first child together. Instead of congratulating the couple or even smiling, Olsen says Westh just accepted the news in a very aloof way, as if it was not a big deal, and he seemed preoccupied with other thoughts.
Looking back on the timeline of events, Olsen says she now knows that the day Westh got this pregnancy news was shortly after he had almost been caught in the attempted kidnapping of the 15-year-old girl in Sorø in 2022. In that attempted kidnapping incident, which happened outside at night on a residential street, Westh threw the girl to the ground and threatened her with a knife.
Westh fled the scene because a man (whose name is not mentioned in the documentary) living in a nearby house had come home and could have witnessed the kidnapping if Westh had gone through with it. The neighbor had a security camera that faced the front of his house. Westh had parked near a hedge in front of the man’s house.
This security camera captured footage of Westh’s car leaving the scene of the crime. It was too dark for the video footage to show the driver or license plate. The surveillance video footage that led to Westh’s arrest was footage from the 2023 kidnapping, which happened during the day and had a much clearer view of the perpetrator’s car.
The documentary’s interview with Kruse shows that Kruse is still having a hard time dealing with the awful truth about his longtime best friend. Kruse confirms all the information about how he and Westh were close like brothers. He also gives more insight into their childhoods, by describing how Westh was a bullied outcast at their school until Kruse befriended him.
“I felt obligated to protect him,” Kruse says in the documentary. Kruse mentions that Westh was teased about having crooked and discolored teeth as a boy, but when Westh got his teeth fixed, he became much more of a confident extrovert. When Westh was a teenager, Kruse says Westh spent time in drug rehab for addiction to a drug or drugs that Kruse does not name in the documentary. However, Westh’s former friends who are interviewed in the documentary say they did a lot of partying with Westh. They only admit to getting drunk or smoking marijuana with him.
Looking back on their friendship, Kruse says he thought Westh was asexual and didn’t judge him for not being interested in dating. The only clue that Kruse admits he overlooked was an incident when he briefly caught a glimpse of what Westh was looking at on Westh’s computer, and Kruse saw what Kruse will only vaguely describe as violent pornography. Kruse says he didn’t confront Westh about it, partly because Kruse was in denial over what he had seen and partly he didn’t want to intrude on Westh’s privacy. Kruse also figured that it’s not a crime for adults to look at this type of porn, so he didn’t think that Westh looking at this porn was an indication of sexual deviancy that Westh would inflict on others.
Westh asked Kruse shortly afterward if Kruse had ever looked under Kruse’s bed. Kruse told Westh no because he respected Westh’s privacy. When police rescued the kidnapped 13-year-old girl from Westh’s house, they found that underneath Westh’s bed was what can only be called a kit with items that could be used in kidnapping and rape. And what made things more personally disturbing for schoolteacher Kruse was the 13-year-old victim was a student of his at the time.
The police search of Westh’s house also found a disturbing amount of child sex abuse materials and detailed lists of other potential victims whom he had been stalking. After his arrest, Westh pleaded guilty to charges of possession of child sex abuse materials, kidnapping, attempted kidnapping, rape, attempted rape and assault. However, he pleaded not guilty to murder and attempted murder. Westh was found guilty of these two charges in his 2024 trial. He is serving his life sentence in a Danish prison, but exactly where he is incarcerated is not publicly disclosed because of the severity of his crimes.
In the documentary, Kruse reads out loud a letter that he received from Westh after Westh was sentenced to life in prison. In the letter, Westh says of his heinous crime spree: “I do hope you that can overlook this completely stupid action.” Westh also included an application to visit him in prison. Kruse says ruefully of Westh’s prison communication: “I think this shows how detached from reality he is.” Kruse also reads aloud a goodbye letter that he sent to Westh, who is told in the letter that Kruse considers their friendship to be completely over.
“A Friend, a Murderer” shows a personal perspective of how criminals who commit the worst crimes are often able to lead double lives and can deceive those who are closest to them. There is no mention in the documentary of Westh’s parents and what they think about the crimes their son committed. Perhaps because Westh spent so much time with Kruse, it would be fair to say that Kruse was the closest person in Westh’s life when Westh committed these horrific crimes. No one can say for sure if these crimes could’ve been prevented, but the documentary serves an example of possible clues to look for when these crimes happen in a community.
Netflix premiered “A Friend, a Murderer” on March 5, 2026.
Culture Representation: Filmed from 2019 to 2024, the true crime documentary film “The Alabama Solution” features an African American and white group of people talking about legal cases accusing the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) of corruption in Alabama men’s prisons.
Culture Clash: Among the allegations against ADOC are prisoners being assaulted and murdered by ADOC employees; bribery and threats to silence potential whistleblowers; unsafe and unsanitary conditions in prison; inadequate or neglectful medical care; and illegal slave labor.
Culture Audience: “The Alabama Solution” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in true crime documentaries about American prison systems.
Pictured in front row, at far left: Sondra “Sandy” Ray holding a photo of her deceased son Steven Davis in “The Alabama Solution” (Photo courtesy of HBO)
“The Alabama Solution” is a disturbing exposé that shows examples of Alabama Department of Corrections corruption that has been detailed in numerous lawsuits. However, this documentary gets repetitive and ignores issues in women’s prisons. Despite these flaws, “The Alabama Solution” is very effective in how it brings into focus the humanity of the people who’ve been damaged or killed by this corruption, so that some of them just aren’t names in legal documents or news reports.
Directed and produced by Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman, “The Alabama Solution” was filmed from 2019 to 2024 and had its world premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. The movie uses a combination of cell phone footage recorded by inmates in Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) prisons; archival news footage; and exclusive interviews conducted by “The Alabama Solution” filmmakers. The cell phone footage recorded from inside the prisons includes interviews with inmates, in addition to harrowing scenes of filthy living conditions, unattended prisoners in medical crises, and employee guard stations that have sleeping or missing employees. “The Alabama Solution” was nominated for Best Documentary Feature Film for the 2026 Academy Awards.
Why is Alabama singled out in this documentary? According to unsourced statistics in “The Alabama Solution,” Alabama state prisons have the highest drug overdose rate, the highest murder rate and the highest suicide rate in the United States. “The Alabama Solution” lists other alarming stastics as captions. But unfortunately, the documentary doesn’t list the information sources for any these statistics. The documentary’s lack of named and verifiable sources when listing statistic information is an omission that lowers the journalistic quality of this documentary.
Where “The Alabama Solution” excels the most is in first-person testimonials and interviews with some ADOC inmates and their loved ones. The documentary has interviews with ADOC inmates Robert Earl Council Jr. (also known as Kinetik Justice), Melvin Ray, Raul Poole, James Sales, as well as other incarcerated men who chose not to be identified by their names. By the end of this documentary, one of these men has died in prison under suspicious circumstances. Another man became a victim of a brutal beating that he says was done by ADOC employees, and the assault was so severe, the injuries caused him to lose an eye. This review of “The Alabama Solution” won’t reveal which of these men had these tragic experiences, in case viewers want to find out by watching the documentary.
Most of these inmates appear on camera for these interviews, which were done on cell phones that the men smuggled into prison. A few of the men opted not to have their faces shown on camera, but their voices are undisguised. A caption near the beginning of the documentary says, “Alabama’s state prisons are operating at nearly 200% of their intended capacity, with one-third of the required staff. In this environment, use of contraband cell phones has proliferated.”
According to what people say in the documentary’s interviews, prisoners risk getting caught having these prohibited cell phones because they think it’s more important to have these cell phones as protection to record evidence of all the crimes that are being committed in the ADOC system. This video evidence can be uploaded or sent to people and places for safekeeping. Based on what’s described in this documentary, there’s no shortage of crimes that can be filmed in these prisons and many other prisons.
The crimes that are the focus of this documentary are those commited by ADOC employees against the prisoners. These crimes include murder, assault, bribery and other illegal coercion, deprivation or neglect of medical care, and illegal slave labor. Lawsuits have been filed against ADOC, individual Alabama prisons and/or individual ADOC employees for these allegations. Most of these lawsuits are settled out of court or dismissed.
The prisoners and their loved ones who have been active in seeking justice for these types of crimes describe being ignored, gaslighted and/or threatened by Alabama officials, in a system that is set up to hide corruption and crimes committed by ADOC employees against prisoners. The prisoners who are whistleblowers usually risk retaliatory punishments that result in ADOC employees inflicting, false accusations, solitary confinement, beatings, torture, or death, according to the interviews. Those who participate in the crime cover-ups are often rewarded, according to lawsuits against ADOC.
“The Alabama Solution” examines the case of 35-year-old Steven Davis, an inmate who was killed by being beaten to death in 2019 at William E. Donaldson Correctional Facility in Bessemer, Alabama. ADOC employee Roderick “Big G” Gadson was named as the chief culprit of this fatal beating. However, Gadson claimed self-defense because he and other ADOC employee witnesses claimed that Davis was attacking them with makeshift blades as weapons.
The documentary chronicles much of this investigation on camera, from the moment the the filmmakers heard an inmate give a phone tip saying that Davis’ death was murder. “The Alabama Solution” shows the trip to Birmingham to UAB Hospital’s intensive care unit, where Davis died and his body is seen covered with a bed sheet. Davis’ mother Sondra “Sandy” Ray (no relation to Melvin Ray) and Davis’ brother Brandon are interviewed in the documentary. They are seen grieving with other family members.
Sandy Ray is the family member who is featured the most. She expresses her frustration about trying to find out how and why Davis died and not getting her phone calls returned by the William E. Donaldson Correctional Facility’s warden. Brandon says he took a photo of Davis’ body in the hospital because he wasn’t sure if the family would get the body returned to them. “I wanted to take a photo as evidence,” he comments.
Sensitive viewers should be warned: The photo is shown in the documentary. And it’s heartbreaking. Sandy Ray comments in the documentary on how this photo affects all the good memories and images she has of her slain son: “That picture of what they done to him overrides all the good.”
The family hears the “official” cause of Davis’ death (killing done in self-defense) when it’s reported on the news. The inmate who called in the tip about the death being murder wanted to remain anonymous and said that several other prisoners witnessed an ADOC officer stomp on Davis’ head repeatedly during the assault while Davis was unarmed. The tipster didn’t want to name the officer, but he advised Davis’ family to get an attorney to investigate.
And that’s exactly what happened. The documentary shows civil rights trial lawyer Hank Sherrod, who was hired to represent Sandy and her family, making phone calls to several William E. Donaldson Correctional Facility inmates to interview them under attorney confidentiality, although the inmates on the phone knew they were being filmed for a documentary. Some of the men who are contacted immediately deny knowing what happened, or they say they know what happened but don’t want talk about it. One of the men says an ADOC officer is in the room while he talks to Sherrod, even though Sherrod says that it’s the law in Alabama for a prisoner to be entitled to have no one else in a room when talking to an attorney.
A break in the investigation comes when an inmate (whose identity is withheld from the documentary) names Gadson as the killer and says other ADOC officers actively covered up the crime, by making the inmates do things such as clean up the blood before official investigators arrived, and offering special privileges to inmate witnesses who would claim they saw nothing. This inmate witness also said that Davis had a bladed weapon, but Davis never used it or showed it in a threatening manner during this incident that led to Davis’ death. According to this witness, the weapon was about 15 feet away and on the floor when Gadson was assaulting Davis. Gadson “unmercifully beat the guy [Davis] to death,” the inmate witness says during the interview.
The documentary shows Davis’ cellmate Sales telling a different story in his phone conversation with Sherrod. Sales’ version is that Davis had weapons tied to bedsheets, and Gadson was only trying to help Davis when Davis attacked Gadson. In the phone interview, where Sales appears undisguised on camera, Sales hesitates when Sherrod asks him for more details on what Davis was doing that would warrant this type of beating.
However, Sales is able to confidently give details about the ADOC policy that allows employees to use force in self-defense against an attacking inmate. Sales’ way of speaking changes when he recites this information, giving the impression that he was fed this information and memorized it. Sales also admits that he is due for an upcoming release from prison and doesn’t want to do anything to jeopardize this release. However, Sales promises Sherrod that after Sales is released from prison, he will personally tell Davis’ mother the entire story.
An unidentified inmate who gives a phone interview for the documentary says that Gadson is part of a William E. Donaldson Correctional Facility employee group known in the prison as the Wrecking Crew because they’re “addicted” to inflicting brutal abuse on the inmates. The other alleged members of the Wrecking Crew are not named in the documentary, which could’ve dug deeper into the reportedly large network of abusers in the ADOC. “The Alabama Solution” makes Gadson look like the main villain, when there are obviously many more who are like Gadson or worse.
The documentary does not interview Gadson, but he is seen in videoclips from a recorded deposition in one of the many lawsuits that have been filed against him. In this deposition, which is for a lawsuit that’s separate from the Davis case, Gadson is arrogant and flippant when an unseen and unidentified attorney asks him why Gadson has been sued several times for assault and other abuse of prisoners. Gadson admits to using force on the job, but he denies that the force was excessive.
In 2020, Sandy Ray sued Gadson and ADOC for wrongful death in the killing of Davis. The case was settled out of court in 2024. According to Alabama news website AL.com and other news sources, Sandy received a $250,000 settlement payment, and the state of Alabama had $393,000 in legal fees for this lawsuit. These financial amounts are legally part of public records for the state of Alabama.
An even bigger lawsuit against ADOC was filed in 2020 by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), based on a DOJ investigation that began in 2016. The lawsuit alleges numerous ADOC crimes, as described the documentary and in this review. Alabama state officials, such as governor Kay Ivey (whose second and final term ends in 2026) and district attorney Steve Marshall have pushed back by saying the federal government should not get involved in Alabama state matters that need an “Alabama solution.” At the time “The Alabama Solution” documentary was released, the DOJ lawsuit was still pending and is expected to drag on for years.
Council and Melvin Ray co-founded Free Alabama Movement, an activist group aimed at advocating for civil rights of incarcerated people in the ADOC. They both say they have experienced abuse and retaliation (including solitary confinement) from ADOC employees who want to silence them and stop them in their Free Alabama Movement activities. In the documentary, Council says the system wants inmates to be ignorant of their rights and to fight each other inmates because it’s a “divide and conquer” strategy.
The purpose of the Free Alabama Movement, he says, is to unite inmates, educate inmates of their rights, and give legal assistance or resources. Free Alabama Movement has successfully led prisoner boycotts of work that’s considered slave labor, but these boycotts are temporary interruptions to much bigger problems. One of the biggest obstacles that prisoners face is the very nature of being in prison means that people will have varying degrees of opinions on what “punishment” should look like. However, “punishment” in the United States should not mean taking away basic civil rights that people are entitled to under the U.S. Constitution and in state laws.
Ostensibly, the Free Alabama Movement sounds like it’s for all Alabama prisoners who need help with civil rights issues. However, the Free Alabama Movement (just like this documentary) seems to be all about male prisoners and definitely makes it look like the needs of male prisoners are more important than the needs of any other prisoners. It’s a huge blind spot that blatantly excludes the fact that female prisoners have similar problems wherever they are incarcerated. “The Alabama Solution” also has no mention of prisoners who aren’t cisgender, such as transgender people or non-binary people, whose gender identities make them even more vulnerable to abuse in prison systems.
It doesn’t seem as if anyone who made this documentary asked Council, Melvin Ray or anyone in the Free Alabama Movement why this advocacy group gives preference to cisgender men. This bias is a form of gender discrimination for issues that affect prisoners of any gender identity. “The Alabama Solution” also refuses to acknowledge the harsh reality of racial inequalities in the U.S. criminal justice system. Any documentary about an American prison system cannot be considered truly comprehensive unless these racial inequalities are examined.
Other people interviewed in the documentary include former corrections Quante Cockrell and Stacy George, who give brief comments that don’t reveal anything surprising when they say that a lot of prison employees can be violent bullies. Alabama attorney general Marshall is also interviewed, but his comments sound like pre-rehearsed public relations statements that sidestep or deny the serious allegations in the DOJ lawsuit. Council’s daughter Catrice and his father Robert Earl Council Sr. are shown briefly making comments about the injustices that they say Robert Council Jr. experiences in prison.
“The Alabama Solution” does not try to garner sympathy for the reasons why these men are in prison. Instead, the documentary is aimed at holding people accountable for committing crimes against these prisoners and exposing a system that does more harm than good in rehabilitating those who are incarcerated. And what does it say about a prison system when hardcore inmates are afraid of getting murdered by the prison employees?
Council Jr. is the only prisoner in the documentary who’s willing to talk openly about why he’s incarcerated. He was sentenced to life in prison for murder. Council Jr. says when he was a young man, he was a drug dealer who shot a man whom he says was high on crack cocaine and was allegedly trying to run down Council Jr. with a car. Council Jr. also admits he sold drugs while in prison, but he makes the excuse that it was mainly to pay for child support.
“The Alabama Solution” is an intentionally ironic title because by the end of the documentary, it’s made woefully clear that there is no solution in sight to the massive problems in the ADOC (and other similar prison systems) because too many people have financial stakes in making sure those problems continue to thrive. The documentary includes archival commentary from radio station call-in listeners who have an attitude that every prison inmate needs to rot and suffer in a personal hell. It’s an attitude that is reflected in how numerous powerful officials want prison systems to be operated. And it’s an attitude that’s not going away anytime soon.
HBO released “The Alabama Solution” in select U.S. cinemas on October 3, 2025. HBO premiered the movie on October 10, 2025.
The following content is generally available worldwide, except where otherwise noted. All TV shows listed are for networks and streaming services based in the United States. All movies listed are those released in U.S. cinemas. This schedule is for content and events premiering this week and does not include content that has already been made available.
March 9 – March 15, 2026
TV/Streaming Services
All times listed are Eastern Time/Pacific Time, unless otherwise noted.
HBO Max’s limited documentary series “Naked on the Net: The Truth About Rose Leonel” premieres on Tuesday, March 10 at 3 a.m. ET/12 a.m. PT.
Monday, March 9
“Fatal Attraction” “In the Shadows” (Episode 1631) Monday, March 9, 9 p.m., TV One
“120 Hours Behind Bars” “Washoe County Jail” (Episode 108) **Season Finale** Monday, March 9, 9 p.m., Discovery
“People Magazine Investigates” “In the Cut” (Episode 907) Monday, March 9, 9 p.m., Investigation Discovery
No new true crime movies releasing in theaters and on home video this week.
Radio/Podcasts
No new true crime radio or podcast series premiering this week.
Events
Events listed here are not considered endorsements by this website. All ticket buyers with questions or concerns about the event should contact the event promoter or ticket seller directly.
All start times listed are local time, unless otherwise noted.
Culture Representation: The true crime documentary series “Predator Hunters” features a predominantly white group of people talking about cases from the Dallas-based Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.
Culture Clash: The series, which features different cases per episode, gives summaries of how the sexual predators in these cases were apprehended and eventually convicted of their sex crimes.
Culture Audience: “Predator Hunters” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in true crime documentaries that takes a straightforward approach in telling stories about sexual predators who were caught and punished in the U.S. criminal justice system.
William Ross Potter (pictured at far right) during his 2017 arrest for attempted enticement of a minor in “Predator Hunters” (Photo courtesy of A&E)
Using police footage and interviews, the docuseries “Predator Hunters” has factual retellings of Texas police arrests of convicted sexual predators who target children. Unlike other shows with similar topics, this show reveals case results. People who are expecting a series that’s like “To Catch a Predator” (which was part of NBC’s “Dateline” from 2004 to 2007) might be disappointed. “Predator Hunters” avoids making the cases look like sensationalistic humiliation for the suspects and instead presents the cases in a more straightforward manner.
Directed by Ross Young, “Predator Hunters” is narrated by Steve Zirnkilton, who is best known as the narrator voice of the “Law & Order” TV series. The “Predator Hunters” series showrunner is Stuart Rose. Tony Godwin, a detective with the Dallas Police Department’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, is the host of the show. In “Predator Hunters,” Godwin relays the facts, but the show also gives him room to voices his opinions and share some behind-the-scenes information on what he was thinking when he was hunting these sex offenders, who ended up being convicted of the sex crimes featured in each case.
Episodes of the first season of “Predator Hunters” were not available for review in advance. This review covers the series premiere episode, titled “By Any Means Necessary.” Three cases are featured in this episode, with all of the perpetrators using the Internet in some way to commit their sex crimes.
The first case is about the 2020 arrest of James Wade King, who was 55 years old when he tried to lure what he thought was a 13-year-old girl into having sexual relations with him. The 13-year-old girl was actually Godwin being a decoy after he got a tip that the social media platform AntiLand was a hunting ground for sexual predators who target children. King had a criminal record that included prior arrest for terrorist threats and filing a false police report.
As Godwin explains in the show, law enforcement officials and other decoys have to be very careful about not committing entrapment. When decoys pose as underage children on the Internet, the decoys immediately say that they are underage, and they wait until the perpetrator is the first to initiate the sex talk. In the case of King, he asked to see a photo of his potential victim, so the task force’s lead forensic investigator Audrey Palmer was enlisted to send a photo of herself as a teenager and pretend to be 13 years old when she talked on the phone with King.
There is video footage of King being arrested and interviewed by Godwin after the arrest. At first, King acts like he didn’t know that the female he was trying to have sex with was underage. In the post-case commentary, Godwin says he never believed King’s denials. King cuts the interview short when he says he wants to speak to an attorney.
An epilogue to the case mentions that King pleaded guilty to attempted enticement of a minor. In December 2021, he was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison. This prison sentence was no doubt affected by his prior criminal record.
The second case featured in the episode is about the 2022 arrest of Jared Capizzi, who was caught with more than 2,000 child sexual abuse (CSA) materials on his technology devices and more than 8,000 CSA images. “He had one of the largest sickest collections of child pornography I have ever seen,” Godwin says while not even trying to hide his disgust. Capizzi, a construction worker who was on parole at the time of this arrest, had a criminal record that included drug-related arrests, fraud and forgery.
At the time of his arrest for CSA possession, Capizzi was living with his mother. There’s police footage of the house being searched after police got a warrant. His mother (whose face is blurred out to protect her privacy) is shown sitting in a room with another elderly woman and expressing disbelief at what is happening. It’s also mentioned that Capizzi is the father of an underage son living with the son’s mother, who is an ex-partner of Capizzi’s.
Meanwhile, in the interrogation room, Capizzi doesn’t know at first why he’s been brought in for questioning, so he signs a waiver saying that he doesn’t need to have an attorney present during this questioning. Godwin takes the two phones that Capizzi brought with him and then confronts Capizzi about Capizzi’s involvement in receiving and distributing CSA materials. Capizzi gets flustered and is caught in lies and contradictions. In 2024, Capizzi pleaded guilty to receipt of child pornography and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
The last case is the most dramatic because it shows police footage of the perpetrator almost running away nearly escaping arrest. William Ross Potter was busted in 2017, when he tried to entice what he thought were two underage teen boy cousins into having a sexual tryst with him. Potter, who was 59 at the time, was apprehended outside of a store where he bought condoms for this meetup.
Godwin comments in a repulsed tone that when Potter thought he was going to meet these “underage teens,” Potter arrogantly demanded that his potential victims had to reimburse Potter for the condoms. After his arrest, Potter is heard making a phone call to his wife, whose voice is disguised on the show, to protect her privacy. She is noticeably upset. In the phone call, Potter tries to downplay the arrest and makes it sound like he was unfairly set up by police.
It wasn’t the first time that Potter was arrested for a sex crime. He had also a 2017 arrest in Waco, Texas, for online solicitation of a minor. An epilogue mentions that Potter pleaded guilty to the attempted enticement of a minor, for the arrest that was featured on this show. He was sentenced to 19 years in federal prison.
Godwin (who has a professional and sturdy way of presenting each case) mentions that being a parent has made him especially concerned about children’s safety. Godwin and his colleagues repeatedly say that even though they witness a lot of disturbing things as part of their job, these task force members say they like doing their job because it’s about protecting children. Also featured in this episode are Godwin’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force detective colleagues Robert Golladay (a technology forensics expert whom Godwin describes as his best friend for more than 30 years) and Brandon Poor.
“Predator Hunters” has minimal re-enactment footage and instead makes Godwin’s storytelling and the police camera footage the driving forces for the show’s narratives. The rapport and the camaraderie seems genuine for the task force members featured on this show. An area where “Predator Hunters” can possibly improve is by using each case to give tips or advice to people on how to prevent or spot online sex predators who might be targeting children.
“To Catch a Predator” and its former host Chris Hansen are known for “gotcha”-style confrontations with suspected sex predators who arrive at decoy houses. Viewers who want to see those types of confrontations might think that “Predator Hunters” is boring in comparison. One of the biggest flaws of “To Catch a Predator” and copycat shows is that they don’t give follow-up information on what happened to the legal cases of the arrested suspects. “Predator Hunters” is admittedly predictable, because all the predators whose arrests are featured on the show were convicted as a result of those arrests. However, updates on “Predator Hunters” provide satisfying conclusions for viewers who want to know if justice was really served.
A&E premiered “Predator Hunters” on March 5, 2026.
Culture Representation: The true crime documentary series “Hunt for the Missing: Chicago” features a predominantly African American group of people talking about Chicago missing person cases that are still open.
Culture Clash: The series, which features a different case per episode, re-examines clues and evidence independently from the Chicago Police Department, in attempts to solve the cases.
Culture Audience: “Hunt for the Missing: Chicago” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in true crime documentaries about unsolved mysteries of missing people.
Joe Struck and Pamela Childs in “Hunt for the Missing: Chicago” (Photo courtesy of Investigation Discovery)
The true crime docuseries “Hunt for the Missing: Chicago” presents investigations of Chicago missing persons cases in a way that’s compelling and compassionate. Pamela Childs, the retired Chicago police detective who hosts the show, has narration that’s a little stiff, but her conversations are more natural. “Hunt for the Missing: Chicago” also gives important TV exposure to African American missing persons cases, which often get much less American media exposure than cases of missing white people.
“Hunt for the Missing: Chicago” is produced for Investigation Discovery by Blackfin, a division of Lionsgate Alternative Television, Mainstay Entertainment and Gary Sherman Films. Only the first episode of “Hunt for the Missing: Chicago” was available to review before the series premiered. Childs is shown doing a lot of the “on the ground” investigations by interviewing witnesses. She also gets some assistance from Joe Struck, who is also a retired detective from the Chicago Police Department.
The series’ first episode, “Shadows from the Southside,” is about the case of 26-year-old Kierra Coles, a U.S. Postal Service mail carrier, who went missing on October 2, 2018. Coles was three months pregnant at the time. She was last seen in public in surveillance video of Coles at Women, Infants and Children (WIC) store taking cash from an ATM sometime before 11 p.m. Central Time.
According to what Childs says on the show, persistent efforts from the show’s producers resulted in the show being able to obtain evidence that the public and media have a right to know from the Chicago Police Department. Childs says that although she has connections inside the Chicago Police Department, because she is retired from the department, she doesn’t have any special influence in how any of the department’s active investigations are going. The Chicago Police Department handed over redacted files and street surveillance videos for this missing-person case. These videos are the strongest evidence of who might have been the last person to see Coles alive.
One video recorded around 9 p.m. shows Coles leaving her home in her car with a man wearing a hoodie and who appears to be her boyfriend at the time. The show only identifies this boyfriend by his first name (Josh), and he was the father of Coles’ unborn child. Another video shows what looks like the same man emerging from Coles’ car at another location at around 11:14 p.m., but it’s unclear if he was the driver or a passenger. The driver of the car is not seen in the video.
A third street surveillance video, which is the visually clearest one, was recorded around 12:37 p.m. on October 3, 2018, the day after Coles went missing. The video shows a man with a stocky build and long dreadlocks, as he walks into Coles’ apartment home and emerges with a bag containing unknown items. The man is the same height and build of the man who was with Coles the night before.
Childs interviews Coles’ mother Karen Phillips and two of Coles’ closest friends: Laetavia Thomas and Jasmine Thomas. They describe Coles as someone who was friendly and generous with a feisty and outspoken side to her personality. They also say that Coles was very happy about her pregnancy and was looking forward to becoming a mother. Jasmine says she got the impression from Coles that Josh wasn’t as enthusiastic about this pregnancy.
Coles’ mother Phillips says that Coles and Josh dated for about six years. Phillips describes him as “respectful and quiet,” but Phillips wasn’t completely impressed with him because he didn’t have stable employment. Phillips bitterly says that back in October 2018, when Coles went missing, Josh offered to help in the search for her, but he never did. Josh moved to Louisiana a few weeks after Coles’ disappearance.
Jasmine says Coles and Josh had a “toxic” relationship because of allegations that Josh constantly cheated on Coles. Jasmine says that Coles had a hard time ending the relationship because Coles was in love with Josh. Laetavia says she only saw Josh with Coles only three times in the six years that Coles and Josh were dating.
Jasmine is shown the daytime surveillance video, and she immediately identifies Josh as the man seen entering and leaving Jasmine’s apartment. A police report in the case file also mentions that Josh’s best friend identified the man in this video as Josh, who has not been officially named as a suspect or a person of interest in this missing persons case. The show mentions that the Chicago Police Department was denied a warrant for Josh’s phone records, with the judge citing insufficient evidence.
Meanwhile, another man was in Coles’ life at the time she disappeared. Even less information is known about him. His name is not mentioned on the show. However, this other man apparently had a casual date with Coles on the day that she went missing, Laetavia confirms that Coles told her about this date with another man, whom Laetavia briefly saw, but she didn’t actually meet him, and she doesn’t know anything else about him.
The show displays some redacted text messages of the mystery man and Coles communicating with each other on the day that she disappeared. They exchanged 58 text messages that day, which Childs says is an indication that there could have been something more than friendship brewing between Coles and the mystery man. It’s unclear if Josh knew about this date or not.
Childs and Stuck go to the Louisiana home of Josh (who is currently married) in a failed attempt to interview him. Instead, a woman who appears to be his wife answers the door and says he’s not home. The woman’s face is obscured and her voice is altered, to protect her identity.
When Childs identifies herself and says she wants to interview Josh about the Kierra Coles, the woman at the door immediately gets hostile and says that Josh is not going to do the interview and the interviewers shouldn’t come back. Childs also calls Josh’s wife, and she has a similar angry response. Apparently, Josh’s phone number wasn’t available to contact him directly,
Other people interviewed in this episode are Jordan Scherer (a private detective hired by Phillips) and retired Chicago Police Department detective commander William Svilar. Scherer mentions some evidence that puts a different angle on this missing persons case. In 2014, Coles was detained and questioned by police, who were called to the scene of a domestic disturbance incident in the home where Josh had been living at the time with his mother. This police report reveals that the woman who is now Josh’s wife (whose name is not revealed in this show) was his main girlfriend during the time that Josh was also dating Coles.
According to the police report, Coles entered the home without permission and got into a confrontation with Josh. The complainants in this police call were Josh, his mother and another woman. The names of this other woman and Josh’s mother are redacted from the files on screen and are not mentioned on this show. Coles claimed she went to the home to “surprise” Josh and meant no harm. Ultimately, Coles was not arrested.
Because Josh and been dating Coles and his main girlfriend at the same time, and because of this police report, it’s obvious there was some bad blood in this love triangle. According to a research study conducted by the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, murder is the leading cause of death for pregnant women in the United States. The odds seem very slim that Coles is still alive.
Childs comes across as a tenacious investigator who is empathetic to the loved ones of the missing people. However, she could’ve done a little more investigating in this episode of “Hunt for the Missing: Chicago.” If Josh wasn’t available, why not interview any of his friends who knew him and Coles at the time that Coles disappeared? And what about the mystery man who went on a date with Coles shortly before she went missing? More investigation was needed into who he is.
As it stands, “Hunt for the Missing: Chicago” is the type of true crime docuseries that doesn’t have a solved case at the end of each episode. It’s presented in a clear and concise way that is intended to bring more awareness to these cases and might prompt anyone with important information to come forward. With so many of these missing persons cases at a standstill, they need all the help they can get.
Investigation Discovery premiered “Hunt for the Missing: Chicago” on March 4, 2026.
Culture Representation: The true crime documentary series “Girl on the Run: The Hunt for America’s Most Wanted Woman” features a nearly all-white group of people (with one African American) discussing the 2008 prison escape and capture of Indiana convicted murderer Sarah Pender, who has maintained that she is not guilty of murder and is trying to get her murder conviction overturned.
Culture Clash: Pender, who was 29 when she escaped from prison, had several people helping her when she was a fugitive, and she claims new evidence uncovered because of her escape should entitle her to have her murder conviction overturned.
Culture Audience: “Girl on the Run: The Hunt for America’s Most Wanted Woman” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in true crime documentaries about prison escapes and possible wrongful convictions.
Ryan Harmon in “Girl on the Run: The Hunt for America’s Most Wanted Woman” (Photo courtesy of ABC News Studios/Hulu)
“Girl on the Run: The Hunt for America’s Most Wanted Woman” has three true crime stories rolled into one documentary. It’s a story about a woman being sentenced to 110 years in prison for murder; escaping from prison and being caught after nearly five months on the run; and trying to get the murder conviction overturned after new evidence emerged because of the prison escape. This absorbing three-episode docuseries gives an inside account of the 2008 hunt for Sarah Pender when she was an escaped prisoner, as well as the aftermath of her capture. The updates to her murder conviction case might surprise many viewers.
Directed by Sebastian Smith, “Girl on the Run: The Hunt for America’s Most Wanted Woman” has interviews with several of the people who are directly involved in Pender’s legal issues. However, the documentary does not have any interviews with people who are family members and/or friends of the two murder victims in this case: Andrew “Drew” Cataldi and Tricia Nordman, who were an unmarried couple in their mid-20s at the time of their deaths in 2000. This lack of perspective from the victims’ side is the documentary’s biggest flaw.
“Girl on the Run: The Hunt for America’s Most Wanted Woman” doesn’t glorify the convicted murderers who are interviewed in the documentary, but the documentary could have given more information about Cataldi and Nordman, other than the fact that they were murdered when they were living with Pender and her then-boyfriend Richard “Rick” Hull, who was also convicted of these two murders. Pender and Hull are interviewed in the documentary, which also includes interviews with Pender’s parents and some of her friends or acquaintances; law enforcement officials who were in involved in the prison escape hunt or Pender’s murder case; members of Sarah’s legal defense team; and one journalist who has done extensive coverage of Pender’s crime saga.
“Girl on the Run: The Hunt for America’s Most Wanted Woman” has a timeline that could have used slightly better film editing, since the timeline jumps back and forth throughout the documentary. Episode 1, titled “Run Sarah Run,” details how Pender escaped from Rockville Correctional Facility in Indiana, who helped her while she was a fugitive, and why she ended up as a convicted murderer. Episode 2, titled “A Bullet With Her Name on It,” chronicles how the hunt for Pender intensified. Episode 3, titled “The Female Charles Manson,” has information on how Pender was caught and why the prosecutor in her murder case now thinks it was a big mistake that Pender was prosecuted for murder.
Pender was born on May 29, 1979, and raised in her birth city of Greenfield, Indiana. Her parents Roland Pender and Bonnie Prosser also have a daughter named Jennifer, who is not interviewed in the documentary. Roland describes Sarah’s childhood as Sarah being a “joyful child,” who was “kind, considerate and intelligent.”
However, Sarah and her parents both say that Sarah was deeply affected by her parents’ breakup when Sarah was 6 years old. Sarah’s mother decided to leave the family and let Roland raise their daughters as a divorced dad. Sarah says that up until she was a college student, she had a great need to be a people pleaser and constantly sought approval and acceptance from others.
As a student at Purdue University, Sarah studied biophysics, chemistry and trigonometry. But after she dropped out of Purdue, her life went down a path of drugs and crime—especially after she met Hull, who became her live-in boyfriend in Indianapolis. Sarah says she was attracted to Hull because he was physically large and seemed to be very protective of her, which is what she desperately wanted in a romantic relationship at the time.
In the documentary, Sarah says Hull lied to her when they first met by telling her he was in the carpet-cleaning business, and she found out later when she had already fallen for him that he was really a drug dealer. Hull contradicts that information in his documentary interview because he says that he told Sarah from the very start of their relationship that he was a drug dealer. Sarah doesn’t go into details about what drugs they used and will only say that she and Hull “partied” a lot together.
By the time Sarah got involved with Hull, he had an arrest record for several crimes, including two felony convictions for auto theft and unlawful entry. At some point in the relationship, Cataldi (who was also a drug dealer) and Nordman moved in with Sarah and Hull. Sarah describes the other couple as people who were friends with Hull first. Sarah only got to know Cataldi and Nordman after they moved in with Sarah and Hull in 2000.
Cataldi and Nordman were fugitives from a Nevada correctional facility at the time the couple moved in with Sarah and Hull. Cataldi had been incarcerated for possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute, while Nordman was in prison for forgery. Ironically, eight years later, Sarah would also go through the experience of escaping from prison and hiding out with the help of friends.
Sarah and Hull both have very different stories about what happened in their Indianapolis home on the night of October 24, 2000. What they both agree on is that Sarah purchased a shotgun at Walmart earlier that day, and it was the gun that was used to murder Cataldi and Nordman. Sarah says Hull asked her to buy the gun because his felony criminal record prevented him from purchasing firearms. Hull says it was Sarah’s idea to buy the gun.
The murders happened sometime after 11 p.m. in the home where the two couples lived. Sarah says that she went out for a walk, and when she came back, she saw Cataldi and Nordman murdered. According to Sarah, Hull admitted to Sarah that he committed the murders, and he asked her to help hide the bodies. Hull has previously gone on record to say that he came home that night to find Sarah holding the gun near the murdered bodies of Cataldi and Nordman. Hull also claims Sarah asked him to help hide the bodies.
Sarah believes that Hull’s motive for murdering Cataldi and Nordman was because there had been growing tensions between Cataldi and Hull because Cataldi’s sister owed drug money to Hull. Sarah says that Nordman was most likely murdered because Hull didn’t want to leave any witnesses alive. Hull says that Sarah murdered Cataldi and Nordman because Sarah was jealous of Nordman and because Sarah didn’t want Cataldi and Nordman living there anymore.
What Sarah and Hull both agree on in their stories is that they both dumped the bodies in a nearby garbage bin. Sarah says Hull threatened to kill her if she didn’t help him dispose of the bodies and keep the murders a secret. Sarah said she stayed in the relationship with Hull because she feared that he would kill her too. “Things were a blur, and everything happened so fast,” Sarah says in the documentary about what happened after Cataldi and Nordman were murdered.
Hull and Sarah were eventually arrested after the bodies of Cataldi and Nordman were found. Hull pleaded guilty to the murders and received two 45-year sentences, with the possibility of parole. However, he is now appealing those convictions. Sarah pleaded not guilty and went to trial. In 2002, she was convicted of the murders and sentenced to 110 years in prison, with the possibility of parole.
In the documentary, Sarah says she takes full responsibility for covering up the murders and the illegal disposal of the bodies, but she has never changed her story that Hull was the only person who actually murdered Cataldi and Nordman. Sarah believes she has served more than enough time in prison for the crimes she has admitted to, and she continues to say that she was framed by Hull for the murders. To her detriment, Sarah seems to have a problem accepting the fact that her prison escape made things worse for her in her quest to have her murder conviction overturned.
The most damning evidence against Sarah was a letter that a convicted robber named Floyd Pennington (who knew Hull in prison) had claimed was written by Sarah to him. In the hand-written letter, there was this seeming confession to the murders: “I just snapped. I didn’t mean to kill them.” Pennington was also the “star witness” in the prosecution’s case against Sarah in her trial for murder.
However, that “confession letter” evidence is now being called into question as a fabrication because the handwriting in the letter doesn’t match Sarah’s, and Hull is now claiming that the letter was fabricated. Sarah’s defense team for her murder trial did not put forth any handwriting analysis as evidence that Sarah did not write the letter. Sarah’s current defense team, which is a different team from the legal representation that she had for her trial, says that handwriting experts have since determined that Sarah did not write the letter.
In addition, after Sarah’s prison escape and she after was sent back to prison for this escape, evidence was uncovered that Pennington had written a list in the early 2000s of people he wanted to get revenge on at the time. Sarah’s name was on the list. Pennington is not interviewed in the documentary. It’s unclear if anyone from the documentary reached out to him for comment.
In his documentary interview, Hull says the so-called confession letter was fabricated, but he doesn’t comment on Sarah’s accusations that Hull framed her and Hull was the person who persuaded Pennington to fabricate the letter and lie about it in court testimony. Hull also says because his own case for these murders is under appeal, he can’t comment about certain things that could affect his appeal. However, Hull remarks that if he could go back in time, he wishes he had never met Sarah. Hull also says that when he and Sarah were a couple, he was in love with her.
Why was Sandra writing to Pennington in the first place? According to Indianapolis journalist Vic Ryckaert, who is interviewed in the documentary, Sarah had a “steamy pen pal” relationship with Pennington. It’s a recurring theme in Sarah’s life of crime: Sarah, by her own admission, uses her sexuality and charm to get people to do what she wants.
It’s mentioned several times in the documentary that she is very manipulative and a convincing liar. For example, Indiana Department of Corrections chief investigator Willard Plank describes Sarah this way: “She had an ability to bring people in to her. I’d never seen an inmate like that before.” But does having this power of persuasion make Sarah a murderer?
Through interviews with Sarah and other people, the documentary details who helped her when she escaped from Rockville Correctional Facility in Rockville, Indiana, on August 9, 2008. Scott Spitler, who was a Rockville Correctional Facility corrections officer at the time, drove the getaway van, in exchange for $15,000 and sex from Sarah. Sarah got the money by selling contraband in prison. Spitler was later arrested, convicted, and sentenced to eight years in prison for his role in this escape.
Sarah comments on her relationship with Spitler: “I did what I had to do. I saw Scott as a means to an end.” She admits that Spitler was probably in love with her or had romantic feelings for her that weren’t mutual. Sarah says that Spitler made her promise that she would text him after she escaped from prison, but she says she never kept that promise.
As part of this escape plan, Spitler dropped Sarah off to a meeting place, where Jamie Long, a former prison inmate and friend of Sarah’s, was waiting to pick up Sarah in another car. Long let Sarah stay at Long’s place for a brief period of time. Long is not interviewed for the documentary, which has some audio recordings that Long did with police investigators.
Sarah describes the feeling that she had when she and Long drove away after Sarah had escaped from prison: “I felt completely refreshed. I remember hitting the dashboard, and I was like, “I’m free!'” Sarah says why she planned her escape from prison: “I knew I was going to die in prison. And then, one day, I thought: ‘I can get out of here.'”
In the documentary, Sarah says Long was responsible for a botched money exchange that eventually led to Long’s arrest. According to Sarah, Long was supposed to give $3,500 in cash to Sarah but only delivered $350. Long got paranoid that she would be followed by police to the McDonald’s restaurant where the money exchange would happen, so she had a mutual friend named Peggy Darlington (a former cellmate of Sarah’s) hide Sarah in the trunk of Darlington’s car, while Long delivered the money to Darlington in a restroom at the McDonald’s restaurant.
Darlington, who is interviewed in the documentary, says she adamantly believes that Sarah is not guilty of murder. “She didn’t do anything she was accused of. She wouldn’t hurt anybody,” Darlington says. Long eventually cooperated with authorities when Sarah’s prison phone records were traced to Long’s phone. Darlington also cooperated with authorities. Unlike Long, Darlington did not get into legal trouble for assisting Sarah during Sarah’s prison escape because Darlington was not a getaway driver.
Sarah says during her time as a prison escape fugitive, she used burner cell phones (disposable cell phones that can’t be traced) and disguised her identity with aliases, fake IDs and dyeing and cutting her hair. She also wore glasses and hid the real color of her eyes with colored contact lenses. Sarah says she became suspicious of Long cooperating with authorities, so Sarah destroyed the cell phone that Sarah had been using to contact Long, got another phone, and moved in with a stripper friend named Thea, whose last name is not mentioned in the documentary.
And once again, sexual entanglements were part of these relationships. Sarah, who is openly bisexual or queer, describes Long as someone who was her lover when they were in prison together, but their relationship eventually became a platonic friendship. Sarah and Thea did sex work together while Sarah was a fugitive. This sex work included having paid threesomes with a married, retired businessman named Tom Welch, who is heard in the documentary only through audio interviews with police.
In the documentary, Sarah describes Welch as a “sex addict” who willingly helped her evade capture after he found out that she was prison escape fugitive. Welch became so smitten with Sarah, he helped her relocate out of Indiana and got her jobs through his family members and other people that he knew. Sarah says it was through Welch that Sarah was able to get low-profile administrative assistant jobs in Cincinnati and later Chicago. In exchange for his cooperation with authorities, Welch was not charged with any crimes for helping Sarah during her time as a fugitive.
However, Sarah’s days as a fugitive were numbered after she was profiled on the TV series “America’s Most Wanted.” That TV exposure resulted in an anonymous tip that led to her being captured at the apartment she was renting in Chicago, on December 22, 2008. In the documentary Sarah says she didn’t resist being captured because at that point, she thought it would make things worse for her, and she was tired of being a fugitive.
In “Girl on the Run: The Hunt for America’s Most Wanted Woman,” Sarah’s descriptions of her life as a fugitive are juxtaposed with descriptions from Ryan Harmon, who at the time was part of the U.S. Marshal Fugitive Task Force that was looking for Sarah. Harmon, who is also a former Indiana police officer, says in the documentary that he became obsessed with this case and wanted to be the one to personally arrest Sarah.
Harmon says at one point, after a situation where he thought he was close to finding Sarah, he was ready to shoot her if he had to do it: “I’ve never had to shoot anyone, but I guarantee that bullet had her name on it.” Harmon also complains that he “suffered” tremendously because of this case but says that he doesn’t want to talk about how the case affected his personal life.
But then, later in the documentary, Harmon describes how he would get drunk on vodka on a regular basis at night while working on the case, and he would wake up with hangovers. And then, Harmon breaks down and cries when he said the case destroyed his marriage, and he lost his wife and kids in this divorce. Keep in mind that Sarah was a fugitive for only little more than four months, so it’s more likely that Harmon had problems in his marriage long before Sarah escaped from prison.
After all the obsessive time and energy that Harmon put into the fugitive hunt of Sarah, he wasn’t even the one who received the anonymous tip that led authorities to where Sarah ended up being arrested. Harmon also wasn’t the arresting officer, but he describes how he decided not to spend time with his family in the days close to Christmas 2008, so he could go to Chicago to be there in time for Linda’s capture.
Sarah mentions in her interviews that she thinks misogyny is a big reason for how she’s been treated by the criminal justice system and the media. After being sent back to prison, she was put in solitary confinement for five years. Sarah believes she got this extreme punishment because the male-dominated law enforcement officials who decided her punishment for the escape didn’t like that she had outsmarted them for this prison escape, and they wanted to make a punishment example out of her. Sarah also says Hull blaming her for the murders is an example of how men often blame women for their own misdeeds.
Sarah also takes issue with how the media tried to portray her as a worse criminal than she really is. When “America’s Most Wanted” profiled her as a fugitive who escaped from prison, she was described as a “female Charles Manson.” Regardless of whether or not people think Sarah is guilty of murder, the comparison to Manson is off-base. Manson had a long history of being convicted of several crimes before being convicted of murder, and he was a cult leader who convinced certain people in his cult to become serial killers. Sarah does not fit that description.
Larry Sells, the prosecutor in Sarah’s murder trial, gives one of the documentary’s most memorable interviews. Sells says he now believes that star witness Pennington was lying in his testimony against Sarah. Sells also comments that if he had the evidence about the fabricated confession letter at the time that Sarah was being investigated for murder, he never would’ve prosecuted Sarah for murder. Sells firmly believes that Sarah’s murder conviction is a huge miscarriage of justice, and he deeply regrets prosecuting her for this crime.
However, it’s not up to Sells to overturn her conviction. The documentary includes the 2025 court hearings to get the conviction overturned and the fight to get Sarah released from prison. The documentary includes an epilogue with the results of these hearings. These results will not be mentioned in this review, in case people want to see the documentary to find out this information.
Sarah’s defense team includes attorneys Timothy Daley and Martin Tankleff. (Tankleff was wrongfully convicted and exonerated of the 1988 murders of his parents, and he was released from prison in 2007.) Daley and Tankleff are both interviewed in the documentary. Other people interviewed in the documentary are Indianapolis police detective Anthony Finnell and Heather Rashel, who is a former inmate of Sarah’s.
“Girl on the Run: The Hunt for America’s Most Wanted Woman” gives viewers a lot to ponder in this controversial murder case. In the documentary, Sarah is sometimes sympathetically vulnerable, sometimes charmingly self-deprecating, and sometimes defiantly arrogant. Someone’s personality is not evidence of guilt or innocence, but this documentary is certainly an example of how media coverage can make a difference in how people might think about a notorious convicted criminal.
Hulu premiered “Girl on the Run: The Hunt for America’s Most Wanted Woman” on February 19, 2026.
Culture Representation: The true crime documentary series “Wild Boys: Strangers in Town” features an all-white group of people discussing the hoax perpetrated by American brothers Kyle Horn and Roen Horn, who illegally crossed the border into Canada in 2003; were homeless on the streets of Vernon, British Columbia; and told lies about being raised in extreme isolation in the rural British Columbia city of Revelstoke.
Culture Clash: The Horn brothers received donations and free lodging from charitable people who thought the brothers were vagrants who had difficulty adjusting to a modern lifestyle, but the brothers’ lies were exposed in 2004, after they were interviewed on the Canadian news program “Disclosure.”
Culture Audience: “Wild Boys: Strangers in Town” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in true crime documentaries about con artists, but this sluggish and lazy documentary doesn’t do much but let the Horn brothers gloat about their fraud and give a platform to the brothers’ enabling parents and the family’s conspiracy theories.
Tami Ryder in “Wild Boys: Strangers In Town” (Photo courtesy of CBS/Paramount+)
“Wild Boys: Strangers in Town” is a pointless and dull documentary that’s just a showcase for two mentally ill American fraudsters who pretended to be raised in the wilds of Canada and got charity donations out of their lies. They take no accountability for their crimes. This two-episode docuseries was filmed over an approximately nine-year period (from 2016 to 2025), but by the end of the documentary, almost nothing is revealed about what these two exposed con artists are doing with their lives except spouting conspiracy theories, talking about how they don’t trust society norms, and being enabled but their dysfunctional parents.
Directed by Jeremiah Hammerling and Rita Baghdadi, “Wild Boys: Strangers in Town” has a total running time of 91 minutes (46 minutes for Episode 1; 45 minutes for Episode 2), so it’s a little odd that this was made into a two-part series instead of just making it into a feature-length film. As it stands, “Wild Boys: Strangers in Town” is so scant on new and interesting information, this documentary could’ve easily been 60 minutes or less if the directors didn’t drag out the documentary with sluggish pacing and too much self-absorbed rambling commentary from the two fraudsters.
Episode 1, titled “Out of the Woods,” describes what the brothers’ lives were like when they were discovered as homeless people who claimed that they lived their childhoods in isolation and were taught to fear people. Episode 2, titled “Into the World,” shows what happened after the brothers did a TV interview and their lies were exposed, including footage of the brothers since they were deported back to the United States.
A press release for “Wild Boys: Strangers in Town” has this description of the documentary: “A decade in the making, the project gained additional traction following the release of the [2022] hit podcast Wild Boys, produced by Campside.” Translation: Some documentary filmmakers had some interview footage that no one cared to buy, until some people decided to jump on the bandwagon of a popular podcast by putting together this sloppily made and boring documentary.
Even if you’ve never heard of this story before watching this documentary, it’s so obvious from the way these fraudsters do their interviews that they seem proud of getting away with something in Canada that most people wouldn’t be allowed to get away with in the United States. Therefore, when the “reveal” comes that they were caught lying, this reveal is underwhelming. The only thing surprising is that these two hoaxers weren’t exposed earlier.
Here are the basic facts: In 2003, two homeless young brothers were seen wandering around the streets of Vernon, British Columbia. They told people their names were Tom Green (who was 22 at the time) and Will Green (who was 15 at the time), and they were living behind a grocery store. In the documentary, the brothers are identified as Tom Green and Will Green until the documentary reveals the truth: The older brother’s real name is Kyle Horn, and the younger brother’s real name is Roen Horn. In 2003, both brothers (especially the younger brother) were malnourished while they were homeless in Vernon.
A Vernon resident named Tami Ryder (who is interviewed in the documentary) inquired about these vagrants and found out where they were living. As a gift to the brothers, she left some quarter coins behind the store with a note that had her name and phone number. In the note, Ryder told the brothers to call her if they needed help. Kyle was the one who contacted her. The documentary includes a portion of this recorded phone call.
Kyle told Ryder and other people that he and his brother (who were still using the Green aliases) grew up in extreme “off the grid” isolation in the woods of Revelstoke, British Columbia. The story was that the brothers’ parents didn’t allow the brothers to grow up with electricity and indoor plumbing in the cabin where they lived. The brothers claimed they never went to school and never had a medical checkup. The brothers also said that they were taught to fear people outside of their small, tight-knit family.
The younger brother said he was a vegetarian but he had bizarre eating habits: He refused to eat any fruits or vegetables that had to be pulled out of the ground in order to be harvested because he said that type of harvesting was “killing” these fruits and vegetables. He also resisted going to a hospital, although he eventually had to go to a hospital for treatment of his malnutrition. He was involuntarily admitted to a hospital under Canada’s Mental Health Act, which gives government officials the authority to put people in a hospital if those people are a danger to themselves or others.
Ryder took pity on the brothers and led the donation effforts to give the brothers whatever they needed, such as cash, food and shelter. She took them into her home, treated them like family, and let her kids spend time with these vagrant brothers. Ryder eventually arranged for the brothers to stay at a hostel. Kyle seemed excited that the hostel had a computer, and he used the computer on a regular basis. That was one of the first indications that Kyle didn’t grow up as isolated, uneducated and “off the grid” as he said he did.
Kyle and Roen, still using their aliases, would only tell people that their parents’ names were Joseph and Mary, which was actually one of the few things that they said about their family that is true. Local authorities tried to track down the brothers’ parents but could find no records of anyone with the names Joseph Green, Mary Green, Tim Green and Will Green in British Columbia who matched the descriptions of this family. Kyle and Roen said they didn’t know about any other family members except each other and their parents.
Why wasn’t the underage brother living with the parents? Kyle (who did most of the talking for the two brothers) said that he and his underage brother were “let loose” by their parents, who felt that Kyle was old enough to take care of his younger brother. Kyle said that he didn’t want to tell authorities where their family home was because he said that he didn’t want his parents to get in trouble. When asked if he thought his isolated parents were fugitives from the law, Kyle said he didn’t know.
The local media picked up the story about the brothers and nicknamed them Bush Boys. Soon, their story made national news in Canada. For several months, the brothers refused to do interviews or make any comments to media. Ryder says she helped shield them from the media because she believed at the time that the brothers needed privacy to focus on adjusting to their new lives.
But from the beginning, there were skeptics. Henry Proce and Randy Kolibaba—two members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) who investigated this case—are interviewed in the documentary. Proce says the lack of public records for the family (authorities couldn’t even find birth records) made him very suspicious. Kolibaba comments on the brothers’ story: “Just because someone tells you something doesn’t mean it’s true.”
Sean Harvey, who was mayor of Vernon from 1999 to 2005, describes Vernon this way in the documentary: “It’s a great place to visit and an even better place to live.” However, Proce has a less flattering description of Vernon by saying at the time the brothers were in the news, Vernon had experienced a string of gang-related murders. Understandably, many of the residents of Vernon were suspicious of the brothers and who they really were.
The “Bush Boys” brothers also had their share of loyal supporters, including Ryder. However, Ryder says she began to have her doubts when Kyle agreed to take her to meet his parents, but it ended up being a “wild goose chase.” And there were inconsistencies that she noticed in conversations with Kyle, such as he seemed to be knowledgeable about pop culture (including certain movies) in a way that someone wouldn’t be if they really grew up as isolated as he said he did. The brothers also didn’t know how to chop wood, which is ignorance that contradicts the skills that people would need to live “off the grid” in the woods for several years.
The turning point in solving the mystery of the “Bush Boys” brothers happened after Kyle and Roen agreed to be interviewed by the CBC news program “Disclosure.” Timothy Sawa, a CBC journalist, was a producer for “Disclosure” at the time. He describes how “Disclosure” was able to get the interview in March 2004, after months of pursuing the brothers for this interview. Some clips from the interview are shown in the documentary.
After the interview was televised, Sawa says “Disclosure” received an email from a California woman named Mary Horn, who was certain that “Tom Green” and “Will Green” were really her sons Kyle and Roen, who had both disappeared without telling their family where they were. Ryder found out the awful truth on camera. “Disclosure” documented the phone conversations when Mary spoke to Ryder and then Kyle, who was hesitant to talk to his mother Mary on camera. When Mary talked to Ryder, Mary mentioned a scar on Roen’s abdomen as an identifying mark, and this information convinced Ryder that Mary was telling the truth.
“Disclosure” cameras were also there when Mary and her husband Joseph Horn eventually reunited with their missing sons. The documentary includes a short “Disclosure” clip of Joseph and Mary’s reunion with Kyle. Sawa says, “It was a weird, awkward reunion in a parking lot.” Sawa also remembers that Mary and Joseph were eager to have the reunion filmed for TV, whereas he thinks most other parents (especially Canadian parents) would want to keep this type of reunion private.
How did Kyle and Roen travel into Canada without being detected? The answer is surprisingly simple. According to Kyle, he and Roen were dressed as hikers and simply walked over the border near a checkpoint area. He describes border patrol agents being busy with cars that were lined up to go through checkpoints. Kyle and Roen simply walked past the border patrol into Canada, and no one stopped the brothers, according to Kyle.
The brothers (especially Kyle, since he was the adult responsible for underage Roen in this situation) got off very easily for this fraud. They were simply deported and did not face any criminal charges. In the documentary, the brothers seem to be proud that they didn’t face any legal consequences, such as being arrested, jailed, sued, or ordered to pay restitution for the donations that they received. Unfortunately, even if they had faced any legal consequences besides being deported, the brothers probably would’ve found enough gullible supporters to pay their legal fees, just because the brothers had a certain amount of “fame.”
Perhaps the most infuriating part of the documentary is how Kyle repeatedly says in archival interviews, as well as his interviews in this documentary, that he has no remorse for the fraud he committed and the harm that he caused. “It’s not my job to tell you the truth,” Kyle says with a contemptuous smirk in the documentary. Kyle also has a victim-blaming mentality by saying people who believe his lies only have themselves to blame.
Roen shows a little bit of remorse but doesn’t seem to care too much about how people were hurt by the fraud. Roen also doesn’t seem to have a problem with telling lies that hurt people. He has this to say about stories that he or other people might tell: “It matters more how it affects people than if the story is true … Truth is secondary to survival.”
And speaking of survival, this documentary gives way too much time to showing Roen’s obsession with immortality, which he says was sparked by his interest in wanting to be like Peter Pan. The documentary includes 2016 footage from Roen’s YouTube channel called Eternal Life Fan Club, where he babbles about ways to live forever. He’s also shown thanking his parents for giving him the camera that he uses to film videos for the YouTube channel.
As for the brothers’ former supporter Ryder, she says she went through every possible emotion when she found out that she was a victim of this fraud. Ryder comments that she felt like a fool when she found out the truth, but she doesn’t regret helping people whom she thought needed the help at the time. Ryder believes that although Kyle and Roen were wrong for conning people, she also puts some of the blame on the U.S. medical system for “misdiagnosing” Roen, because Ryder thinks Roen and Kyle would not have run away if Roen had gotten proper medical treatment. Ryder also mentions that the experience of being conned has made her more likely to not always believe what people say and be more discerning with her charity efforts.
The brother’s parents Mary and Joseph (who are from Roseville, California) are interviewed in the documentary, which shows how much these parents enable Kyle and Roen. In the documentary, Joseph’s occupation is listed as claims adjuster, while Mary is described as a movie theater employee. Mary and Joseph also have two other children (another son and a daughter), who are seen in family photos, but those siblings are not interviewed in this documentary. Their daughter is briefly seen doing an interview in archival news footage.
In the documentary, Mary and Joseph say that they’re a “normal” family, but these parents also admit that they raised their youngest child Roen to live without rules and boundaries. Someone needs to tell these parents that’s not normal. Joseph and Mary also admit that they’re conspiracy theorists who don’t trust a lot of modern science, mainstream media, and government policies. For example, Joseph says he believes that Earth is flat. They also raised their kids to listen to conspiracy radio programs. Later, Kyle and Roen say they got a lot of conspiracy theory information from the Internet.
As for being a “normal family,” it’s not normal for a family to have a child who writes about wanting to blow up buildings where credit card companies do business. Mary says Kyle wrote about that extreme violence a lot when he was a teenager, and it caused enough concern from adults in his life, he was reported to law enforcement. Mary says that law enforcement interviewed Kyle, but they determined that he posed no real threat. However, Kyle’s violent fantasies are indications of some sort of mental illness that his parents probably left untreated. The documentary never asks these parents what they did to help Kyle with this troubling mentality or if he was ever in therapy to treat his disturbing thoughts.
In the documentary, Joseph and Mary at least have the decency to say a message of thanks to Ryder for looking after Kyle and Roen when the brothers were in Canada. By contrast, Kyle and Roen do not express any gratitude in the documentary to anyone who gave them charity and support during the brothers’ fraudulent life in Canada. In the documentary, Kyle and Roen seem mostly unbothered by their lies and are more concerned with showing that they want to continue to live selfishly and irresponsibly in the type of mindset where they think rules and having jobs don’t have to apply to them.
Mary says in the documentary that Kyle is the type of person who doesn’t want to have a job because he thinks it’s conforming too much to society standards. It’s no surprise that Kyle was willing to live off the charity of others while he and Roen were living their lies in Canada. Mary mentions that after Kyle got deported back to the United States, Kyle moved to Arizona and was working. The documentary frustratingly gives no information on what types of jobs Kyle has held or how he gets money.
As for Roen, he seems to be dependent on his family for everything, although it’s not specifically stated if Roen has any income or has ever held a job. At the time of the documentary’s 2025 interviews with Roen and Kyle (who admit they have a very co-dependent relationship with each other), Roen was homeless, and Kyle says Roen’s homelessness is not by choice. Just like Kyle, Roen does not mention what he’s doing with his life. And whoever conducted the interviews for the documentary didn’t seem to ask those questions. It’s a huge failure for a documentary about two people who committed fraud where they convinced strangers to financially support them.
The Horn parents say that Roen’s health problems caused Joseph and Mary to declare bankruptcy. They quickly mention that Roen has dental issues because of gastric acid from his eating disorder. Another deficiency in the documentary is not interviewing any health experts to give more information on the types of medical problems that are discussed in the documentary.
Roen’s health problems started when he was 9 years old and had a bike accident that resulted in his spleen having to be removed. Roen and his parents believed that he didn’t need to take the prescribed medication. And by then, Roen had already developed an eating disorder. He was eventually diagnosed with orthorexia, which is a fear of food that the person with the disorder thinks is unhealthy and an obsession with eating only food that the person with the disorder thinks is healthy.
Roen’s eating disorder became so severe when he was a teenager, child protective services intervened when Joseph and Mary refused to put him in an institutional medical facility. With Joseph and Mary experiencing the very real probability of losing custody of Roen, who would likely be made a ward of the state, Kyle took it upon himself to run away with Roen, so they could “disappear” in Canada. In the documentary, Mary says Kyle had often talked about living in Canada, but when Kyle and Roen went missing, she had no idea where they could be if they were in Canada.
Mary also describes putting up missing persons flyers of Roen. The documentary has a ridiculous-looking and unnecessary re-enactment showing Mary—not an actress made to look like the 2003 version of Mary—putting up these flyers, even though Mary is obviously much older than she was when she distributed those flyers in 2003. Although Mary says she actively looked for Roen, she admits, “I do wonder if a part of me didn’t want them [Kyle and Roen] to be found.” She believed that Roen was most likely with Kyle and remembers thinking, “Maybe that’s part of the solution.”
In his documentary interviews, Kyle isn’t concerned at all that he put Roen’s health in serious jeopardy by running away and depriving Roen of the medical treatment that Roen needed. “I didn’t think he would die,” Kyle nonchalantly says. “I think it’s just a matter of respect for your freedom.”
Kyle and Roen both say that their main motivation to run away and hide was because they didn’t want Roen to be put in an institution where Roen would be force-fed through a tube. Roen is defensive of Kyle’s decision to run away with Roen to Canada: “I’d much rather have a brother who did what Kyle did than a brother who would’ve turned me in. Kyle did the best thing he could’ve done for me.”
However, Roen also admits feeling uncertainty during their life of hiding and fraud in Canada: “Part of me wanted it to end. I was thinking about, ‘What am I missing in school? How long is this going to go on? When am I going to see my parents again?'”
It goes without saying that if the brothers were going to face any legal punishment (besides deportation) from the Canadian government, then Kyle (who was the adult at the time) would’ve faced harsher consequences than Roen. However, “Wild Boys: Strangers in Town” is such a terrible documentary, it never explains why Kyle never faced any legal consequences besides deportation. Kyle was admittedly the mastermind of this fraud, as well as the crime of transporting an underage child across international borders without parental consent.
Vernon’s former mayor Harvey generously says that he believes that Kyle and Roen were in a “mental health crisis” when they committed their crimes. Proce of the RCMP isn’t willing to let Kyle off the hook so easily with that “mental health crisis” excuse. In the documentary, Proce remembers that when Kyle and Roen were getting on chartered aircraft for their deportation, Kyle was very cold-hearted and didn’t acknowledge any of the supporters who were there to say goodbye to him.
In its own way, “Wild Boys: Strangers in Town” is also callous about the victims in this case because the documentary does not go into details about all the time, money and trust that people wasted on these two losers. Ryder wasn’t the only victim. The taxpayers of British Columbia and other many other people were affected.
This shoddy documentary also gives no sense of how the perpetrators of this pathetic fraud might have evolved or changed from this experience. The brothers and their parents are not asked any tough questions in this documentary. Ultimately, “Wild Boys: Strangers in Town” mostly seems to care about letting these two mentally unwell brothers show their smugness about breaking laws and how they wallow in self-delusional arrogance.
Paramount+ premiered “Wild Boys: Strangers in Town” on February 18, 2026.
Culture Representation: The two-episode documentary series “Murder in Glitterball City” (based on the true crime book “A Dark Room in Glitter Ball City: Murder Secrets and Scandal in Old Louisville”) features a predominantly white group of people (with a few African Americans) who talk about the Kentucky city of Louisville and the case of gay lovers/Louisville residents Joseph “Joey” Banis and Jeffrey “Jase” Mundt, who separately went on trial for the 2009 murder of 37-year-old James “Jamie” Carroll, who was the couple’s drug dealer and sex partner in a three-way sexual relationship.
Culture Clash: Banis (a repeat convicted felon) and Mundt (a technology consultant who had no prior criminal convictions) blamed each other for the murder, which happened in the couple’s house, and they both admitted the murder happened when they were in the midst of a methamphetamine binge.
Culture Audience: “Murder in Glitterball City” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in true crime documentaries that are about sex, drugs, murder and gay culture.
David Dominé in “Murder in Glitterball City” (Photo courtesy of World of Wonder Productions/HBO)
“Murder in Glitterball City” is a mixed-bag true crime documentary whose eagerness to have a variety of people interviewed results in some irrelevant interviews, for the sake of showing quirky personalities. The 2009 murder of Jamie Carroll almost gets overshadowed by Louisville lore. Despite the flaws in this two-part docuseries, “Murder in Glitterball City” tells a riveting story and a cautionary tale about a notorious murder case where many people believe justice was not fully served.
Directed by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, “Murder in Glitterball City” is based on David Dominé’s 2021 true crime book “A Dark Room in Glitter Ball City: Murder, Secrets, and Scandal in Old Louisville.” Dominé, who also works as a Louisville tour guide, is one of the people interviewed in the documentary. According to Dominé, Glitter Ball City is a little-known nickname for Louisville, which was known for being one of the top cities to make glitter balls.
It seems like Bailey and Barbato’s intent is for “Murder in Glitterball City” to be like a documentary version of Dominé’s book about this murder case. However, some elements that might work just fine in a book format don’t work as well in this documentary, such as dramatic descriptions of local members of the community who weren’t involved in the story’s central crime case, a history of the city’s real-estate developments, and tales of paranormal sightings by the local residents. It’s fine for a documentary to give some context and information about the city or community where a crime takes place, but “Murder in Glitterball City” goes overboard with this concept in several parts of the documentary.
“A Dark Room in Glitter Ball City: Murder, Secrets, and Scandal in Old Louisville” has been described as trying to imitate the style of John Berendt’s 1994 book “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” which mixes true crime and fictional embellishments about the case of Savannah, Georgia-based antiques dealer Jim Williams and his multiple trials for the murder of male prostitute Danny Hansford. “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” has so many fictional additions to the story, the book is often listed as a novel. One of the characteristics of both books is how the authors tried to make the cities in which the crimes took place to be almost like another story character, with each city filled with eccentric personalities.
“Murder in Glitterball City” is so intent on emulating the storytelling style of “A Dark Room in Glitter Ball City: Murder, Secrets, and Scandal in Old Louisville,” several of the documentary’s interviewees read aloud excerpts from the book, especially if they’re reading a passage from the book that describes themselves. In addition, “Murder in Glitterball City” has a narrator (actor Mick Wingert) reading excerpts in off-camera voiceover narration.
Barbato and Bailey are not new to documentary filmmaking. Among the numerous previous documentaries that they co-directed include 2000’s “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” (about Tammy Faye Bakker), 2016’s “Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures” (about artist/photographer Robert Mapplethorpe) and 2021’s “Catch and Kill: The Podcast Tapes” (about Ronan Farrow’s investigation of disgraced entertainment mogul Harvey Weinstein). However, Barbato and Baily (who are co-founders of the production company World of Wonder) are best known for their work in reality TV, with the Emmy-winning franchise of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” as their biggest success. At times, “Murder in Glitterball City” is filmed and edited like a reality show.
Part 1 of “Murder in Glitterball City” gives background information about the case against repeat convicted felon Joseph “Joey” Banis and technology consultant Jeffrey “Jase” Mundt, who separately went on trial for the December 2009 murder of 37-year-old James “Jamie” Carroll, who was stabbed and shot to death in the 8,000-square-foot Louisville house of gay couple Banis and Mundt. Banis and Mundt were 38 at the time of the murder. Part 2 of “Murder in Glitterball City” chronicles the high-profile 2013 trials of Banis and Mundt and each trial’s outcome. Part 2 also includes some previously unreleased recordings that Banis and Mundt did in the weeks before they were arrested.
Because this murder case received an enormous amount of media coverage, it’s already a well-known fact that Banis was found guilty of the murder of Carroll and was sentenced to life in prison, with the possibility of parole. Mundt was found not guilty of murder, but he was found guilty of evidence tampering and theft. Mundt received an eight-year prison sentence, he was released after serving four years of that sentence, and he has dropped off the public radar.
The documentary includes audio clips of phone interviews that Banis did from prison with the “Murder in Glitterball City” documentarians in 2022 and 2024. Banis still maintains that he was a bystander who watched Mundt murder Carroll. In the 2024 interview, Banis adds another detail that was not brought up in either trial. Banis now says he was tied up like a captive while Mundt murdered Carroll. Because Banis can’t prove it, it’s highly unlikely this statement will help Banis get a new trial. All of Banis’ appeals for a new trial have been denied so far.
The end of the documentary says that Mundt could not be reached for comment. Mundt’s current whereabouts have been publicly unknown for years, although Ted Shouse, one of his former attorneys who’s interviewed in the documentary, seems to know where Mundt is but won’t say what he knows about Mundt’s whereabouts. The documentary includes a short archival audio interview with Mundt, although the documentary does not mention the year that this interview took place.
No one from the families of Carroll, Mundt and Banis are interviewed in the documentary. However, some of the friends and former work associates of Carroll, Mundt and Banis are interviewed. In addition, the documentary has interviews with several people who were involved in the investigation and the trials, such as Louisville police officials, the prosecutors and defense attorneys.
“Murder in Glitterball City” lays out the basic facts of the case in a roundabout way. Viewers will have to wade through a lot of extraneous stories from Louisville locals who aren’t directly related to this murder case. After a while, these stories become a little irritating and distracting, but not so distracting for “Murder in Glitterball City” to go completely off the rails.
Mundt, a Louisville native, lived for a number of years in Chicago as an adult. In 2009, after a breakup with a boyfriend who is not named in this documentary, Mundt relocated from Chicago and moved back to Louisville. He worked as a technology consultant for the University of Louisville. Mundt bought a fixer-upper 8,000-square-foot Victorian house in Louisville’s historical St. James-Belgravia District (specifcally in the Belgravia Court area), with plans to turn the house into a bed-and-breakfast inn.
And so, the documentary has lengthy descriptions of the history of Belgravia Court and how it became an attractive residential location for gay men who renovated many of the old houses there. Interviewees giving this type of commentary include residential real estate agent Deborah Stewart, architectural historian Debra Richards Harlan, Louisville tour guide Angelique X Stacy, singer Maria Eckerle, preservation architect Kurtis Hord, and openly gay Louisville residents Bill Gilbert and Dale Strange.
Carroll was openly gay and had a drag queen alter ego named Ronica Reed. And so, there are long segments about the drag queen/gay nightclub scene in Louisville. Interviewees include drag queens Mykul Valentine and Hurricane Summers; Casey Leek, a former manager of gay nightclub Starbase Q; Banis’ ex-boyfriend Kevin Asher; and Banis’ friend Daniel Cissel, who says he had a fling with Mundt.
Cissel says he always felt uneasy about Mundt and decided to no longer be his sex partner. Cissel also mentions that before Cissell knew that Carroll had been murdered, Mundt tried to give some of Carroll’s clothes to Cissell, but Cissell declined the offer because the clothes were too big for Cissell. In the documentary, Cissell says it still upsets him to think about how cold-blooded Mundt must have been to want to give Cissell the clothes of a man whom Mundt knew was murdered and buried in the basement of Mundt’s house.
Cissel and other people in the documentary describe Banis (who often wore his hair styled in a Mohawk) as heavily addicted to meth and having a “bad boy” persona. Banis had mood swings where he would be quiet and introverted, but he would become an aggressive loudmouth when under the influence of meth. He also had a charismatic side that persuaded people to enable him.
Banis was a Starbase Q bartender sometime between 2004 to 2006. Leek describes Banis as having a dual personality and being a “compulsive cleaner,” which Leek says was probably due to Banis’ meth addiction. Leek says Banis was probably the thief who “cleaned out” the club, by stealing liquor, stereo speakers, cash from the club’s ATM, valuables from a safe and other items from Starbase Q around the same time that Banis quit the job. In the documentary, Summers confirms seeing Banis stealing liquor from the club, and Banis admitted to Summers that he was stealing the liquor to use it for another club.
After quitting Starbase Q, Banis had a short-lived gay/lesbian nightclub called Glow, which opened in December 2006. Leek comments that he saw Starbase Q’s stolen speakers at Glow. Leek says his Starbase Q boss reported the theft to police, who said that police were investigating but waiting to catch Banis on drug-related crimes and other thefts. Cissel says he worked for a time at Glow and remembers Banis as a “nice boss” who was very generous with sharing drugs but wasn’t great about paying employees on time.
In the documentary, Leek wonders how Banis was able to get a liquor license for Glow when convicted felons aren’t allowed liquor licenses in Kentucky. The documentary doesn’t answer that question. However, it’s mentioned in the documentary that Banis’ father is a prominent surgeon, and Banis grew up in a fairly affluent family in Louisville.
Banis’ ex-boyfriend Asher says that he and Banis dated each other for a number of years, beginning in their teens, when they both still lived with their respective parents. Asher and Banis eventually moved in together. Asher mentions that Banis told him about having a criminal record, but Asher was willing to look past it because he thought Banis was willing to stay out of trouble.
Asher said he broke up with Banis after a violent incident when they took LSD together. Banis got into an argument with Asher, slashed Asher’s arm with cut glass, and said, “See what you made me do.” Banis was arrested for this assault, but the documentary doesn’t mention what the legal outcome of the arrest was. Asher gets visibly upset and emotional when he makes this comment about Banis and the aftermath of the arrest: “I get him kicked out [of their shared home], and that fucker moved in next door. It was scary.”
In October 2009, Banis met Mundt on the gay dating website Adam4Adam and moved in with Mundt within a few weeks after they met. Banis says he was surprised that Mundt wanted to get involved with Banis, who was up front in telling Mundt about Banis being HIV+ and a convicted felon. By the time this toxic couple met, Banis had several felony convictions for drug possession, theft and other crimes. By contrast, Mundt did not have a criminal record and was known to have a “preppy” clean-cut image. Mundt says in the documentary’s archival interview that he was attracted to Banis because Banis was the opposite of him.
However, Mundt wasn’t as “clean-cut” as he appeared to be. Two of his former friends whom he knew in Chicago—Linda Krauth and Megan Albritton—talk about noticing him being erratic and often sniffling, which are two telltale signs that someone might have a drug problem. Krauth and Albritton say that Mundt cut off contact with them not long after he got out of prison, and they have no idea where he is.
Becky Shaw—who worked with Mundt when he was her supervisor as a Northwestern University project director—also saw a suspicious side to Mundt. Shaw says that Mundt spoke with a fake British accent because he told her that sounding British would get him more respect. Shaw describes him as very nitpicky and someone who always thought he was the smartest person in the room.
Shaw also remembers an incident when she accidentally locked her laptop in a desk, and Mundt told her he knew how to fix the problem. He took her to a store that sold bolt cutters and told her he had experience using bolt cutters because he used to steal bicycles when he was a student at Northwestern. Later, Mundt suggested but didn’t tell Shaw directly that she should get work reimbursement for the bolt cutters by pretending it was something else on her expense report.
Mundt’s habit of dishonesty also seemed to extend to what he told Banis, who says that Mundt repeatedly told stories about being formerly employed by the National Security Agency and still having connections to U.S. intelligence services. In one of Mundt’s meth-fueled ramblings that’s heard as an audio recording in the documentary, he mentions having an injury from his government security work in Bratislava, Slovakia. There has never been any proof that Mundt used to do this type of work.
Whatever Mundt’s drug habits were before he met Banis, there’s no doubt that they were both addicted to meth when they were a couple. They also obsessively documented their relationship through video and audio recordings. One of these videos became key evidence in the murder case. According to the documentary, there are hundreds of thousands of digital files of these recordings that were not processed by the Louisville Metropolitan Police Department because, at the time, the police department only had Windows PC computers, and the files were only compatible on Mac computers.
Carroll was also addicted to meth and had an addiction to crack cocaine, according to Carroll’s friends Erika Hart, Mick Bryant and Bryant’s mother Michelle Schiffer, who are all interviewed in the documentary and say that they were Carroll’s drug buddies. Bryant is the only one of these three who says in the documentary that he’s now clean and sober. They all describe Carroll as being very open and proud about being gay and a drag queen.
Hart says of Carroll: “Jamie did whatever the hell suited him. He would wear high heels to the grocery store in Pineville [a small city in Kentucky]. You just don’t do that. It’s country [rural and conservative]. Have you been? Don’t go when the banjos get louder.”
Carroll was also a drug dealer and sex partner for Mundt and Banis, who were heavily into BDSM, an acronym for bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism. The “d” in BDSM can also mean dominance, and the “s” can also mean submission. Carroll met Banis through an online website for gay male hookups and started a casual sex relationship with him. After Banis and Mundt became a couple, Carroll was invited to have three-way sex with Banis and Mundt.
The documentary includes details of Mundt placing BDSM ads for sex partners in threesomes or other group sex scenarios. In these ads, Mundt described himself as obsessed with rubber clothes and role-playing violent scenarios (including asphyxiation) as a dominant. By all accounts, the three-way sexual relationship between Banis, Mundt and Carroll was consensual.
Carroll also had a history of several arrests (mostly for drug-related crimes), but the documentary doesn’t discuss those crimes at length, perhaps because the documentarians did not want to make it look like they are shaming the victim. Instead, the documentary has a brief flash of Carroll’s arrest rap sheet. Carroll’s friends and acquaintances describe him as a bubbly and friendly person whose life went downhill when he became addicted to drugs.
Jodi Ritchie was Carroll’s childhood friend in their hometown of Martin, Kentucky, an economically depressed small town. She says she had an adolescent crush on Caroll, and she remembers that Carroll taught her how to French kiss, even though she found out later that he was openly gay. Ritchie says that for a while, teenage Carroll lived at their high school because he was kicked out of his home for being gay. She also describes hearing about teenage Carroll being in a hospital because Carroll’s father had almost beaten him to death.
Diana Owens Shaggs was Carroll’s instructor at the Carl Perkins Beauty School in Paintsville, Kentucky, in 1995. Owens Shaggs remembers Carroll as having a passion for hairstyling and being enthusiastic about opening his own beauty salon. Carroll fulfilled that ambition and owned a beauty salon called Illusions. But by the time Carroll got involved Mundt and Banis, Carroll had already lost his business and his home because of Carroll’s drug addiction.
The story of why Mundt and Banis got arrested for Carroll’s murder is bizarre and one of the reasons why this murder case got a lot of publicity. In the early-morning hours of June 17, 2010, Mundt frantically called 911 to report that Banis (whom he described as his “ex-boyfriend”) was breaking into the house and was intent on attacking Mundt. Police quickly arrived and arrested Banis.
Banis and Mundt were taken to the Louisville Metro Police Department for questioning. Banis denied the break-in and claimed he was being set up by Mundt because Mundt wanted Banis out of the house. By sheer coincidence, this interrogation was being filmed for the reality/documentary TV series “The First 48,” a true crime show that films police investigators at work. Mundt offered to take a polygraph test, while Banis refused.
Banis then dropped a bombshell when he made this confession during the police interrogation: According to Banis, Mundt murdered Carroll in December 2009, and Carroll’s body was buried in the basement of the house. Police obtained a search warrant to dig in the basement. Later that day, police found the body of Carroll in a plastic storage bin that was buried about five feet below the basement floor. Banis and Mundt were arrested and charged with first-degree murder, theft and tampering with evidence.
From the start, Banis and Mundt blamed each other for being the “real murderer,” but both admitted to participating in covering up the crime, under threat of being killed by the “real murderer.” Banis and Mundt accused each other of being the mastermind/controller in the relationship. Banis and Mundt both claimed in their statements to law enforcement that the murder of Carroll was not pre-meditated.
When they went on trial, Banis and Mundt testified against each other. Banis (whose trial took place before Mundt’s trial) did not testify in his own defense. The documentary includes courtroom footage from the trials and does a good job of showing through split screens how this former couple’s testimony against each other is eerily similar.
However, the documentary points out one big discrepancy in the courtroom testimony: Mundt said that Banis slashed Carroll’s throat, but the medical examiner’s report showed that Carroll was actually stabbed in the neck several times, which matches Banis’ description of Mundt murdering Carroll. Even if Banis is telling the truth about the fatal neck wounds on Carroll, it still doesn’t exclude Banis from being a participant in the stabbing and/or shooting of Carroll.
The most controversial evidence in the case is a “confession” video where Banis claimed to be suicidal, Banis said he “killed someone,” and he was holding Mundt hostage. Banis turned the camera to show a seemingly unconscious Mundt on a bed behind Banis. However, a few minutes before this “confession,” Mundt is shown writing the “confession” script on a laptop and coaching Banis on what to say.
To show further proof that Mundt was the mastermind/controlling person in the relationship, the prosecution submitted a BDSM sex video as evidence during Mundt’s trial. In the self-made video (which Mundt and Banis recorded after the murder), Mundt and Banis are having sex, with Mundt being the dominant partner giving the orders. The video was considered the tawdriest part of the trial.
Prosecutors say that Banis and Mundt both participated in Carroll’s murder, and the motive for the murder was Banis and Mundt wanted to get a thrill from killing a human being. However, the jury in Mundt’s trial disagreed and found him not guilty of murder. Several people in the documentary say they believe that Mundt got away with murder.
The editing for “Murder in Glitterball City” jumps around a lot in the story’s timeline. It isn’t until toward the end of the Part 2 episode, after the trial outcomes are discussed, that the documentary mentions that two months before Banis and Mundt were arrested for murder in Louisville, they had been arrested in Chicago for other crimes. Mundt had lost his job, and the couple had been counterfeiting money and were arrested for it. This information should’ve been mentioned earlier in the documentary.
This Chicago arrest occurred in April 2010, when Mundt and Banis were caught leaving a counterfeit $100 bill as a tip for a hotel employee. Chicago police soon found Mundt and Banis in possession of $50,000 in counterfeit American cash, as well as weapons and fake IDs. In a prison interview, Banis says that he and Mundt were desperate for money and had planned to use the counterfeit cash to “get real money.” They chose Chicago for this scam because of Mundt’s familiarity with the city.
In one of his interviews from prison, Banis says that he and Mundt decided that Banis would take the blame for all these arrest charges in Chicago, because Mundt would be the more likely person to get the $20,000 that was needed to bail Banis out of jail. The plan worked, because the charges were dropped against Mundt, who got the bail money for Banis. Banis was out on bail for these Chicago arrest charges when he and Mundt were arrested in Louisville for Carroll’s murder.
The most time-wasting parts of the documentary are when certain Louisville residents are shown doing shameless self-promotion that has nothing to do with this murder case. A flamboyant married couple named John Tan and Missy Tan, who own a Louisville jewelry store called Little John’s Derby Jewelry (or Little John’s for short), are featured for too much screen time in this documentary, as they talk about their jewelry business, show the guns they keep in the shop, and brag about how popular their TV ads are. The spouses are also shown filming one of these commercials, with Missy as the director. Even the security guard for Little John’s (an off-duty police officer named Greg Terry) is interviewed in the documentary.
Why are the Tans and their jewelry store business in so much of this documentary? Because “A Dark Room in Glitter Ball City” author Dominé says that he was watching a Little John’s ad on TV when he saw the breaking news about Banis and Mundt being arrested. Dominé also claims that he had a brief non-verbal encounter with Mundt about 18 months before the arrest, when Mundt abruptly brushed past him during a realtor tour of the house that Mundt ended up buying. Dominé says he remembers that Mundt didn’t say, “Excuse me,” after making this unwanted body contact. It’s certainly debatable if those stories are true.
“Murder in Glitterball City” also goes on a tacky tangent when the documentary shows people babbling on about what they believe are haunted houses in Louisville, including the house where Carroll was murdered. Louisville paranormal tour guide Stacy is shown doing one of her tours with customers. It leads to another segment showing Stacy, who lives across the street from this house, talking about being certain that she’s seen the ghost of Carroll walking in the house several times from her bathroom window. Another segment in “Murder in Glitterball City” shows Dominé participating in his annual Victorian Ghost Walk event in Louisville. “Murder in Glitterball City” viewers might be wondering at this point: “Is this a true crime documentary or a paranormal reality show?”
Fortunately, “Murder in Glitterball City” comes back to the facts of this case in the documentary’s interviews with the law enforcement officials who were involved in this case. These interviewees include Louisville Metro Police Department head of homicide Donny Burbrink, Louisville Metro Police Department detective Collin King and Jefferson County sheriff deputy Michael Brown. Louisville Metro Police Department detective Jon Lesher, who died in 2018, can be heard in an archival audio interview.
Also interviewed are prosecutors Ryane Conroy and Josh Schneider; Banis’ defense attorneys Justin Brown and Darren Wolff; and Mundt’s defense attorneys Steve Romines and Shouse. In the documentary, Wolff does a lot more talking than Brown, while Romines is more talkative than Shouse. Other people interviewed in the documentary are Staci Huber, who was a juror in Banis’ murder trial; WLKY-TV reporter Marissa Alter; Courier Journal reporter Jason Riley; writer Kim Crum; mitigation specialist LeTonia Jones, who testified for the defense in Mundt’s trial; and contractor Kenny Robertson.
Robertson says Banis that contacted him sometime before June 2010 to get an estimate on what it would cost to cover the house’s first floor with concrete. Robertson he got a weird feeling about this consultation because the basement smelled horrible, and Banis refused to go in the room. Ultimately, Robertson decided not to do the job. Banis and Mundt were arrested not long after this consultation.
“Murder in Glitterball City” has some unanswered questions about Mundt and why he was acquitted of murder. But without insights from any jurors from that trial, the documentary does not answer those questions. Banis’ murder trial juror Huber describes herself as a “true crime junkie” who followed this case closely, and she says she’s still shocked and outraged that Mundt was acquitted of murder. If another documentary is made about this case, maybe it will focus more on getting answers to unanswered questions about the case instead of cluttering up the documentary with off-topic commentary from people who weren’t involved in the case.
HBO premiered “Murder in Glitterball City” on February 19, 2026.
Directed by Conor McCarthy and Lisa Quijano Wolfinger
Culture Representation: The three-episode documentary series “The Scream Murder: A True Teen Horror Story” features an all-white group of people who talk about the case of Torey Adamcik and Brian Draper, who were convicted of murdering their classmate Cassie Jo Stoddart, in 2006 in Pocatello, Idaho, when they were all 16 years old.
Culture Clash: Adamcik and Draper—who planned the murder in advance, and later blamed each other for the murder—were tried as adults and sentenced to life in prison without parole, but some people believe that Adamcik and Draper should be eligible for parole because of U.S. Supreme Court cases deciding that murderers under the age of 18 should not be tried and sentenced under laws that apply to adults.
Culture Audience: “The Scream Murder: A True Teen Horror Story” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in true crime documentaries about what happens in the U.S. legal system when people under the age of 18 are convicted of murder.
John Ganske in “The Scream Murder: A True Teen Horror Story” (Photo courtesy of ABC News Studios/Hulu)
“The Scream Murder: A True Teen Horror Story” is a comprehensive three-episode docuseries about the 2006 murder of 16-year-old Cassie Jo Stoddart in Pocatello, Idaho. Interviews with the killers are included in this documentary, which explores the controversial topic of adult-level punishment for children who murder. The issues for this tragedy are discussed from many perspectives, with the only missing perspective being from anyone in Stoddart’s family, who presumably declined to comment for this documentary.
Directed by Conor McCarthy and Lisa Quijano Wolfinger (also known as Lisa Q. Wolfinger), “The Scream Murder: A True Teen Horror Story” jumps back and forth in the story’s timeline, but the documentary’s skillful editing makes the story cohesive. This murder case received a lot of publicity in the United States, including being featured in episodes of several other true crime series, such as “Dateline,” “Your Worst Nightmare,” “Copycat Killers,” “Murder Among Friends,” “Unmasked,” “A Time to Kill” and “Killer Connections.” However, “The Scream Murder: A True Teen Horror Story” is one of the few documentaries with interview participation from Torey Adamcik and Brian Draper, who were convicted of murdering Stoddart. Adamcik and Draper were 16 years old when they murdered her.
Episode 1, titled “Alone in a Big, Dark House,” details how Adamcik, Draper and Stoddart all knew each other, how the murder happened, and the investigation that followed and resulted in Draper’s confession. Episode 2, titled “Just Like Scream,” includes more information about the investigation, including the discovery of a videotape with shocking evidence, as well as the arrests and trials of Adamcik and Draper. Episode 3, titled “Life Is Cruel,” discusses the aftermath of Adamcik and Draper getting prison sentences of life without parole, and has separate prison interviews that took place in 2025 with Adamcik and Draper. Adamcik and Draper each did their separate interviews on camera at the Idaho State Correctional Center, where they are incarcerated.
People who’ve already heard about the case probably know the basic facts, which are repeated in the documentary. On the night of September 22, 2006, Stoddart was stabbed to death (about 30 times) in a remote area of Pocatello, while she was alone in the house owned by her vacationing aunt and uncle. Stoddart was housesitting for the couple, who were in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, at the time of the murder. Stoddart’s aunt and uncle discovered the body on September 24, 2006, when they returned to their house from their trip.
Three other people had visited the house on the night of the murder: Stoddart’s boyfriend Matt Beckham and their friends Adamcik and Draper, who were all students at Pocatello High School. Adamcik and Draper left around 9:30 p.m. and said they went to go watch the horror movie “Pulse” at a local theater. After Adamcik and Draper left, the house lights mysterious went out and then came back on.
Beckham and Stoddart were frightened about the lights going off and stayed upstairs until the lights came back on. Beckham left around 10:30 p.m., when his mother picked him up at his request. Stoddart declined an offer from Beckham’s mother to get a ride to spend the night somewhere else because Stoddart said she couldn’t leave the house unattended, and she had to take let out the family dog the next morning.
It was later revealed, though confessions, that Adamcik and Draper went to the movie theater and bought tickets for “Pulse,” but they didn’t actually watch the movie at the theater. Instead, Adamcik and Draper went back to the house that night and were the ones who messed with the house’s light breakers, in order to scare Stoddart and Beckham. Adamcik and Draper stayed hidden inside the house and waited for Stoddart to be alone when they murdered her. After the murder, they buried these items: the clothes and masks they wore during the murder, the murder weapons (a Sloan knife and a larger Rambo knife), and a partially burned videotape that made this murder case even more shocking.
Several law enforcement officials who were involved in the case are interviewed in the documentary: Idaho State Police detective John Ganske, Pocatello Police Department chief Roger Schei, Idaho State Police detective John Kempf, Pocatello Police Department captain of investigations division Bill Collins and Pocatello Police Department captain of support services Chad Higbee. They give clear and concise descriptions of how this murder mystery was solved. The documentary has some re-enactments, but these re-enactments are minimal and don’t distract from the interviews.
During this murder investigation, police quickly ruled out Beckham as a suspect because he had an alibi corroborated by his mother, who confirmed that Stoddart was still alive when they left the house to go to the Beckham home. Beckham also passed a polygraph test, although polygraph test results are not admissible in court. After Beckham was cleared, Draper and Adamcik became the most likely suspects and were also questioned by police.
The documentary includes archival footage of all these police interrogations, as well as footage from the trials. In the interrogation footage, Beckham, Draper and Adamcik were interviewed separately, and each of them had their respective parents in the interrogation room with them. Beckham, who was questioned on the same day that Stoddart’s body was found, was polite and cooperative and seemed to still be in shock.
Draper, who was very emotional during his own interrogation, broke down and cried multiple times. At one point, when Draper was alone in the interrogation room, he sobs as if he’s talking to Stoddart: “I wanted to be your boyfriend. I really did. I’ll stop him.” By contrast, Adamcik remained calm while being questioned by police, and he seemed almost emotionally detached when giving his responses.
Draper was the first suspect to confess. His story about going with Adamcik to see the horror movie “Pulse” that night began to fall apart when he couldn’t tell any details about the movie. Draper then changed his story to say that he and Adamcik were looking to steal things from unlocked cars during the time that Stoddart was believed to have been murdered. That story also crumbled when Draper couldn’t give clear and specific details on any of the cars that he said he and Adamcik supposedly approached to see if the car doors were locked or unlocked.
Finally, Draper admitted that he and Adamcik were involved in the murder, but Draper claimed he was a bystander witness who saw Adamcik stab Stoddart. Draper also claimed that he didn’t know Adamcik would commit this murder. Draper led police to where the evidence was buried. However, Draper probably didn’t think the burned videotape could be viewed.
On the videotape were scenes of Draper and Adamcik filming themselves planning the murder and specifically mentioning that they would murder Stoddart when she was in the house by herself. They wore scary masks during the murder and planned the murder to be like the 1996 horror movie “Scream,” where the opening scene shows a teenage girl (played by Drew Barrymore) who is stabbed to death by a mask-wearing killer while she is alone in a house. In the movie “Scream,” several other students at a local high school also became murder victims in a short period of time.
The videotape also showed Stoddart saying hello to Draper (as he held the camera) while she was standing at her school hallway locker on the day that he and Adamcik planned to murder her. Adamcik and Draper videotaped themselves in a car (with Adamcik driving) just minutes after leaving the murder scene, as they talked excitedly about murdering Stoddart. During this car drive, Adamcik is seen telling Draper that they need to get their stories straight, so they would be able to tell the same stories if questioned. Draper was arrested after his confession.
Adamcik was questioned by police when he didn’t know that police had found this evidence and was unaware that Draper had been arrested. Adamcik’s initial denials about being involved in the murder followed the same pattern as Draper’s: Adamcik started off saying that he and Draper went to see “Pulse.” And then, he admitted the movie alibi was a lie and said they were really trying to find unlocked cars for burglary during the time of the murder. After the police told Adamcik what evidence they had, he was arrested too.
In 2007, Adamcik and Draper were tried separately for first-degree murder. They each pleaded not guilty because they each blamed the other for being the one who actually stabbed Stoddart. In the buried evidence that was uncovered, Draper’s clothes, not Adamcik’s clothes, had Stoddart’s blood on it. The Rambo knife (which was the main murder weapon) had Draper’s DNA on it, not Adamcik’s DNA.
However, trial testimony revealed that Adamcik was the more dominant partner in this homicidal duo, and he was the one who probably masterminded the murder. That’s the same observation made by former Pocatello High School students who knew Stoddart, Adamcik and Draper in 2006, and who are interviewed in the documentary. These former Pocatello High School students are interviewed in the documentary, with some of these former students identified in the documentary by their first names only: Kirsten Barta (her maiden surname), Miranda Chacon, Dani Dixon, a woman named Amber, a man named Josh and a man named Justin.
These former schoolmates describe Stoddart as friendly, helpful, and the type of person who liked to smile. Draper is described as an avid skateboarder who had a reputation for being a daredevil and a goofy jokester. Justin says of Draper: “He liked to hang out with a little group of people who liked to be different.”
By contrast, Adamcik (who wanted to be a movie director) was known for being quiet and serious, which was a personality switch from what he was like before he was 15, when he was known for being upbeat and comical. Amber mentions that during his junior year in high school, Adamcik hung out with fewer friends and seemed to show a darker and more menacing side to his personality. During this time in his life, he developed a fixation on knives.
Adamcik and Draper both were obsessed with horror movies and the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Columbine, Colorado, where two male students murdered 13 other students and a teacher by gun violence. Draper and Adamcik wanted to become famous murderers, according to statements they made on their secret videos and in statements they made after their arrest. Evidence uncovered in the Stoddart murder investigation showed that Adamcik and Draper said in their self-made videos and in their own writings that they had a “hit list” of other students they wanted to kill, and they eventually aspired to do a school massacre such as the Columbine massacre.
After their arrests, Adamcik and Draper eventually admitted that they often stalked other students (usually female students) to find out their routines and to see which ones would be home alone, in order to identify targets who would be the easiest to kill. Dixon talks about an incident when someone (whom she did not see) outside her bedroom window beamed a flashlight into her bedroom one night and ran away when they saw that other people were in the house. Dixon says that she believes Adamcik and/or Draper caused this incident, and it matches a stalking incident of Dixon that Adamcik or Draper described in one of their self-made videos.
Amber says she was invited to go with Adamcik and Draper to hang out at the house where Stoddart was staying on the night of the murder. Amber couldn’t go because she and her parents attended her boyfriend’s basketball game that night. The day after the murder happened (before Stoddart’s body had been found), Adamcik had dinner with Amber, her boyfriend and her boyfriend’s parents at the house of her boyfriend’s parents. Amber remembers Adamcik acted as if nothing was wrong during this dinner. Stoddart’s murdered body was found the following day. In the documentary, Amber says that she is convinced that if she accepted that hangout invitation for the night of September 22, 2006, then she would’ve been murdered too.
Shannon Adamcik (Torey Adamcik’s mother), Pam Draper (Brian Draper’s mother) and Kerry Draper (Brian Draper’s father) are all interviewed separately in the documentary. They all mention that they raised their children in the Mormon faith. These parents also provide more insights into what could have led to this horrible tragedy. Torey Adamcik’s father Sean Adamcik did not participate in the documentary, but he is seen in police interrogation room footage. After Sean knows Torey will be arrested, Sean hugs Torey in a comforting way and tells Torey that he loves him.
Out of the three parents who are interviewed, Shannon Adamcik and Kerry Draper express the most guilt about raising a son who became a murderer and say they feel like they failed as parents. They both say they are haunted by thoughts that they could have prevented the murder if they knew how troubled their sons were. Pam Draper, who says that she still loves Brian no matter what he did, appears to be of a mindset where she blames Torey for influencing Brian to become a murderer.
Shannon Adamcik, who thinks Brian Draper was the bad influence, describes Torey as a fun-loving and good kid who never got into trouble for any crimes before the murders. She says that Torey had a fairly large group of friends until his junior year in high school, when Torey became more withdrawn. Shannon Adamcik says she never saw any warning signs that Torey would become a murderer because he was never violent and didn’t express thoughts of murder to anyone their family.
Kerry Draper is the most emotional of the three parents. He says that after Brian’s trial and imprisonment, he walked away from his lucrative real-estate business and donated a lot of his money. Kerry is also interviewed in a grassy field outside the Idaho State Correctional Center and tearfully says that if he could trade places with Brian in prison, he would. He comments on the murder and the aftermath: “There’s no excuse, no explanation—just misery.”
Pam Draper and Kerry Draper, who adopted Brian when he was a baby, say that Brian had issues with anxiety from a very young age. For a period of time, Brian was in therapy and was taking the medication Ritalin, which is usually prescribed to people diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Brian also had a stutter, which made him self-conscious. As he got taller in his teen years, he was teased more by other kids about his skinny physique and his stutter.
Shannon Adamcik says that Torey and Brian didn’t like each other very much when they first got to know each other, but when they became friends, they were very close confidants. People interviewed in the documentary describe Torey and Brian becoming closer when other friends of Brian and Torey stopped hanging out with Brian and Torey. And it seems like Torey and Brian had an “us against the world” attitude that became twisted and toxic.
Brian and Torey hid their dark thoughts about murder from their families and other friends, but after their arrests, more evidence emerged about how dark their thoughts were, including the discovery of the hit list and plans for a school massacre. Brian also wrote a secret essay called “Black River” about a school massacre. Brian’s defense team was successful in preventing “Black River” to be used as evidence against him in his trial.
As for what Torey and Brian have to say in their 2025 interviews in this documentary, they both admit to their guilt in the murder. However, Brian seems to have much more emotional distance about it because he says that the person he was at 16 no longer exists. Brian no longer has a stutter and speaks with more confidence than Torey does. In these prison interviews, Brian also shows less remorse than Torey does for the murder. It’s a role reversal from their teenage years, when Torey was more confident and more unapologetic than Brian.
Torey and Brian both say that they haven’t been friends since the prison sentence, and they only see each other occasionally in passing, when they’ve had brief conversations. They don’t express dislike for each other. It’s just obvious that they both don’t want to be in each other’s lives ever again.
The biggest questions that people have about this tragedy usually start with the word “why.” Brian says that at the time he and Torey planned the murders, Brian felt invisible and wanted to do something that affected everyone at Pocatello High School. “I wanted people to think of Columbine when they saw me,” Brian comments. Brian also mentions that he thought this type of murderer notoriety would make him more popular and more likely to get a girlfriend. In hindsight, Brian says he was “stupid” for thinking this way.
Torey admits in his interview that he lied to everyone for a long time about not stabbing Stoddart. He now acknowledges that he fully and willingly participated in stabbing her. Torey places equal blame on himself and Brian for the murder. “Me and Brian talked each other into doing it,” Torey says.
Torey also reiterates that he and Brian didn’t dislike Stoddart and didn’t have a grudge against her. She just happened to be the unlucky person who was alone in a house at night in a remote area, which was the ideal situation that Torey and Brian decided they would murder someone for the first time. He says their only motive was because Torey and Brian wanted to know what it feels like to commit murder.
Torey also mentions that during his teenage years, he was struggling with his sexual identity, his religious faith, and his anger toward his parents. He came out as gay shortly after he began his prison sentence. Torey says that when he when he was a teenager, he stopped believing in God and compared it to how people stop believing in Santa Claus. Torey states that when he was a teenager, he began to question things that were taught as “right” and “wrong” in morality. Torey says this inner turmoil is not an excuse, but the inner turmoil fueled his dark thoughts that turned into murder.
Torey’s mother Shannon says in the documentary that Torey coming out as gay was not as important as everything that he and the other people experienced because of the murder. However, Shannon admits that if Torey had come out as gay under normal circumstances, when he wasn’t in trouble for anything, his coming out would’ve been a big deal in their family. Shannon also says that she has accepted that Torey will spend the rest of his life in prison.
The last episode of the docuseries mentions the 2012 U.S. Supreme Court case Miller v. Alabama, which was one of a series of U.S. Supreme Court cases in the 21st century that decided children (people under age 18) cannot be subject to the death penalty or mandatory life-without-parole sentences because of Eighth Amendment protections. However, the U.S. Supreme Court left it up to individual states to decide if they would apply this ruling retroactively to imprisoned people who received these types of prison sentences when they were under the age of 18. Idaho has decided not to retroactively apply this ruling, which means that Torey and Brian will be in prison for life without parole.
Laurence Sternberg (professor of psychology at Temple University), Jacoba Rock (professor of social work at Boise State University) and Kim Hayes (retired assistant district attorney of Louisiana’s Acadia Parish) are interviewed in the documentary to talk about how people’s brains aren’t fully developed until their mid-20s, and this type of development should be taken into consideration in criminal justice cases. According to these experts, underage teenagers are more likely than adults to make impulsive decisions and feel extreme emotions about existential issues. Sternberg and Rock are advocates of not treating people under the age of 18 as adults in the criminal justice system. Not surprisingly, the parents of Brian and Torey believe that Brian and Torey deserve a chance to be paroled, although Shannon Adamcik bluntly says because of Idaho laws: “That’s not going to happen.”
To get another perspective, the documentary has an interview with Jeanne Quinn, whose 14-year-old son Shaun Ouillette was beaten to death in 1986, in Canton, Massachusetts. His murderer was Rod Matthews, who was 14 at the time of the murder. Matthews was convicted of second-degree murder in 1988, and he was sentenced to life in prison, with the possibility of parole. In 2024, he was paroled, which is a ruling that Quinn says she strongly disagrees with because she believes murder should be considered an adult crime, regardless of the age of the person who committed the murder.
The interview with Quinn is emotional, but it seems a little out of place for the documentary to bring up the Ouillette murder case in comparison to the Stoddart murder case because there are major differences. For starters, convicted murderer Matthews was not sentenced to life in prison without parole, as is the case with Torey and Brian. Matthews was also convicted of second-degree murder, not first-degree murder. And lastly, these two murder cases took place in two different states that have different laws when it comes to juveniles accused of murder.
Other people interviewed in the documentary are Dave Martinez, Brian’s former public defender attorney; Bron Rammell, Torey’s former defense attorney; Pocatello High School art teacher Bob Beason, who taught art to Stoddart; clinical psychologist Linda Hatzenbuehler; and Idaho State Journal reporter Jimmy Hancock. Although no one from Stoddart’s family is interviewed in the documentary, the documentary has archival footage of her mother Anna Stoddart giving courtroom testimony. The documentary’s epilogue mentions that Anna Stoddart died of cancer in 2022.
One of the most impactful stories in the documentary isn’t about what happened during the murder but what happened after the trial. Pam Draper says that after Brian was sentenced to life without parole, she and her daughter went to eat at a restaurant. By sheer coincidence, their restaurant server was a member of Stoddart’s family.
Pam, who does not name this person, expected this Stoddart family member to verbally lash out at her. She was shocked when the family member thanked her for being kind to the Stoddart family, and Pam Draper also thanked the Stoddart family member for the Stoddart family’s graciousness. This story is an example that even in these tragic circumstances, devastated family members can try find a way to heal without hate for each other.
Hulu premiered “The Scream Murder: A True Teen Horror Story” on February 11, 2026.
Culture Representation: The true crime documentary film “The Investigation of Lucy Letby” features a predominantly white group of people (with one Asian) who are connected in some way to the case of Lucy Letby, a neonatal nurse from Cheshire, England, who (in 2023) was convicted of murdering seven infants and attempting to murder seven other infants between June 2015 and June 2016.
Culture Clash: Law enforcement says Letby is guilty of the crimes for which she has been convicted, but some of her supporters say that Letby was not given a fair trial and the evidence is faulty.
Culture Audience: “The Investigation of Lucy Letby” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in investigative documentaries about infanticide cases.
Simon Blackwell in “The Investigation of Lucy Letby” (Photo courtesy of Netflix)
The true crime documentary film “The Investigation of Lucy Letby” does a fairly adequate job of presenting both sides of whether or not convicted child murderer Lucy Letby is guilty of the crimes that sent her to prison for life. Previously unreleased police footage is the main reason to watch because the documentary uncovers no new facts. “The Investigation of Lucy Letby” discloses up front that a few of the people interviewed in the documentary have their faces altered by artificial intelligence (A.I.) imagery (and labeled as digitally altered when these interviewees are shown on screen), in order to protect their identities. This use of A.I. technology might be controversial to some viewers, but the interviewees faces, not words, were altered. Most of the documentary’s previously unreleased footage consists of police camera footage during Letby’s arrest and when she was interrogated by police.
Directed by Dominic Sivyer, “The Investigation of Lucy Letby” is a conventionally straightforward documentary that lays out the facts of the case and presents both sides from the perspectives of those who think Letby is guilty or not guilty. Not surprisingly, because Letby was convicted of the crimes that she went on trial for, there are more people in the documentary who think she is guilty than people who think she is not guilty or wrongly convicted. Letby’s supporters think she deserves another trial because they believe the evidence presented in Letby’s 2023 trial had faulty evidence and an incompetent defense team for her trial. Her supporters say that Letby’s trial defense team made a big mistake by not having any expert witnesses testify for Letby’s defense.
Letby and members of her family are not interviewed in the documentary. Letby was born on January 4, 1990, in Hereford, England. She was a neonatal nurse working at Countess of Chester Hospital in Chester, England (located in the county of Cheshire), when she became a suspect for killing several infants at the hospital between June 2015 and June 2016. Letby had been working at Countess of Chester Hospital since 2012. In 2018, she was arrested for these crimes and pleaded not guilty. In 2023, she went on trial and was convicted of murdering seven infants and attempting to murder seven other infants. Letby was sentenced to life in prison.
Police investigators and prosecutors, by their own admission, say that all their evidence against Letby is circumstantial, since no one except the murderer and the murder victims actually witnessed who killed the babies. There were no surveillance cameras in the rooms during the times that the infants were murdered. What the murder timelines all had in common was that Letby was the only hospital employee whose work schedules showed that she was on duty during all the murders, and she had opportunities to be alone with all the babies whom she was convicted of murdering.
A police search of Letby’s home during the investigation found notebooks with disturbing hand-written statements from Letby, such as “I killed them” and “I’m evil.” When questioned by police about these written statements, Letby had no explanation but said that these statements were not murder confessions of the babies who died while she was on duty at the hospital. Letby also had access to the insulin that was found in a few of the babies who died of insulin poisoning.
According to the prosecution, Letby murdered the infants in multiple ways, in order to avoid suspicion. The causes of death included physical abuse, injecting air into the bloodstream, removing breathing tubes, and administering toxic levels of medication. When she was questioned by police, Letby claimed not to know why the babies died and gave no clear explanation of what she was doing when she was alone with the babies. When pressed for details, her usual response was to say that she did not remember. The police camera footage shows that Letby usually spoke in an even-toned voice and didn’t express a lot of emotions, except for a moment when she’s arrested and she breaks down and cries.
Dr. John Gibbs, a retired consultant pediatrician, says he was one of the early investigators who were brought in to find out why an unusually high number of babies were dying at Countess of Chester Hospital. Gibbs said he sounded the alarm that Letby was the most likely suspect, since she was the only hospital employee whose on-duty timelines matched the timelines of all the babies who were murdered from June 2016 to June 2017, and she had opportunities to be alone with the infants during times that the infants were believed to be harmed. However, Gibbs says that a hospital supervisor (whom he does not name in the documentary) told him that Letby couldn’t possibly be a suspect because Letby was known to be very shy and quiet. Countess of Chester Hospital declined to comment for this documentary because of an ongoing investigation that the hospital is getting from the U.K. government and the Cheshire Constabulary.
The two people interviewed in the documentary whose faces are altered by A.I. are a woman identified only as Maisie (who says Letby was her close friend when they were nursing students) and an unnamed woman whose baby daughter Zoe (an alias used for the documentary) was one of Letby’s murder victims. The mother of Zoe gives heartbreaking descriptions of the tragedy and trauma of losing her baby in this horrific way. Maisie staunchly defends Letby and can’t believe that Letby is guilty. Maisie says that she and Letby did some nursing training at Countess of Chester Hospital when they were both nursing students. Maisie says she was surprised that Letby wanted a permanent job at the hospital after they graduated from nursing school, because Maisie remembers other employees being standoffish and exclusionary to Letby when Letby trained there.
Other people interviewed in the documentary are prosecution expert witness Dr. Dewi Evans, Cheshire Police detective superintendent Simon Blackwell, Cheshire Police detective superintendent Paul Hughes, Cheshire Police detective sergeant Danielle Stonier and journalist Kim Pilling, who all believe Letby is guilty. Letby’s criminal defense attorney Mark McDonald (who was hired for Letby’s case after she was convicted and sentenced to prison) and honorary consultant neonatologist Shoo Lee, who are also interviewed in the documentary, think the prosecution’s case was faulty and say that Letby deserves a new trial because the prosecution misidentified the cause of death for at least one infant.
The documentary’s biggest deficiencies are that it does not have interviews with the attorneys who were involved in Letby’s 2023 trial, and there needed to be more background information on Letby, so viewers could know whether or not there were any warning signs about her before she started working at Countess of Chester Hospital. Letby is only described in the documentary as being as an introverted only child of parents who doted on her. A documentary’s epilogue mentions that her trial defense attorney Ben Myers declined to comment for the documentary, but it’s not clear if the documentary’s filmmakers contacted the trial’s prosecuting attorneys for comment.
Because of the documentary’s previously unreleased police footage, “The Investigation of Lucy Letby” gives a little more insight into how Letby was acting while she was in police custody. However, the questions about why these murders happened will probably never be answered, as long as Letby insists that she’s not guilty. If viewers have already made up their minds about whether or not Letby deserves another trial, then “The Investigation of Lucy Letby” probably won’t change a lot of people’s minds either way. Regardless of which side anyone supports, there are no real winners when so many children were senselessly killed.
Netflix premiered “The Investigation of Lucy Letby” on February 4, 2026.
